Russian politician sends piece of shrapnel to Macron after he survives being hit by French-made howitzer

The former head of Russia’s space agency, who was hit by a French-made howitzer during a Ukrainian attack on Donetsk last month, has sent Emmanuel Macron a piece of the shrapnel that was removed from his body.

Dmitry Rogozin, who has also served as Russia’s deputy prime minister, was injured when a Ukrainian shelling attack hit the restaurant outside Donetsk where he was celebrating his birthday, according to the independent Russian outlet SOTA.

Mr Rogozin, 59, was visiting Ukraine and giving military advice to Russian troops in two regions that were annexed by Russia in December.

After the shelling, he was hurt but was out of danger, the state-owned Tass agency reported at the time, quoting an aide of Vladimir Putin’s former second-in-command.

“Wounded in the back. I will live. The shrapnel [passed] a centimetre from my spine,” Mr Rogozin, who has also headed Russian space agency Roscosmos, said at the time.

On Wednesday, while still in hospital, he posted on Telegram a photo of a piece of shrapnel next to a one rouble coin for scale and separate images of a letter addressed to Jean-Pierre Levy, the French ambassador to Moscow.

In the letter to the ambassador, he accused France of “betraying the legacy of the great Charles de Gaulle and becoming one of Europe’s most bloodthirsty nations”.

He added: “In this envelope along with my letter you will see shrapnel from a shell fired by a French 155-mm Caesar artillery unit.”

He asked Mr Levy to pass on the shrapnel extracted from his vertebrae “just a millimetre away from killing me” on to Mr 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 Donbass”.

“I ask that you give the shrapnel the surgeons cut out of my spine to French President Emmanuel Macron,” Mr Rogozin wrote. “And tell him that no one will escape responsibility for war crimes.”

“It [the shrapnel] punctured my right shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra only a millimetre away from killing me or rendering me an invalid.”

Also hurt in the attack was Vitaly Khotsenko, the head of government of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, his press secretary was reported as saying.

Mr Rogozin is known for his provocative anti-West remarks.

In May, around six weeks after Mr Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Mr Rogozin said Nato countries could be “destroyed” by Russia within half an hour in the event of a nuclear war.