Russia’s ex-deputy PM sends Macron shrapnel embedded in his buttocks
The former head of Russia’s space agency who was hit in the buttocks by a French howitzer at his birthday party has sent Emmanuel Macron a piece of shrapnel removed from his body.
Dmitry Rogozin, a flamboyant former deputy prime minister of Russia who once promised to capture Vienna, Berlin and Budapest, is in hospital after he and his party came under Ukrainian shelling in a hotel outside Donetsk last month.
On Wednesday, Mr Rogozin posted a photo of a piece of shrapnel next to a one ruble coin for scale, and separate images of a letter addressed to Jean-Pierre Levy, the French ambassador to Moscow.
He accused France of “betraying the legacy of the great Charles de Gaulle and becoming one of Europe’s most blood-thirsty nations”.
‘A millimetre away from killing me’
The 59-year-old asked the ambassador to pass the shrapnel, which he said was extracted from his vertebrae “just a millimetre away from killing me”, on to President Macron and “tell him that no one will escape punishment for war crimes of France, the US, the UK, Germany and other Nato nations in the Donbas”.
A francophone who represented Russia at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels for three years, Mr Rogozin also told the ambassador he “fondly recalled” travelling with him to the Russian-leased space centre in Kazakhstan and the site of a crucial battle in 1812 between Napoleon’s army and Russia.
French-made Caesar artillery shells hit the Shesh-Besh hotel and restaurant outside Donetsk a few days before Christmas, killing two people and injuring a few more. Some of the shrapnel became embedded in Mr Rogozin’s buttocks, according to reports at the time.
Rogozin criticised over party location
Mr Rogozin was criticised at the time of the strike for being too carefree close to the front line. He also denied reports that he was having a birthday party, defending the gathering as a “work meeting”. Hotel employees were seen carrying out a crate of champagne from the charred building.
On Wednesday Mr Rogozin thanked Russian doctors for saving his life, saying he was “alive again and almost healthy”.
Up until the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Mr Macron had been wary of sending weapons to Ukraine and made repeated attempts to get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
