‘No one will escape punishment’: Macron sent shrapnel that pierced Russian space chief

Istanbul: 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.

Rogozin on Wednesday posted 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.

President Vladimir Putin, right, listens to Russian Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin speaks in 2019.Credit:AP

He accused France of “betraying the legacy of the great Charles de Gaulle and becoming one of Europe’s most blood-thirsty nations”.

The 59-year-old asked the ambassador to pass on 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 Donbass”.

A view of a restaurant where several people, including Dmitry Rogozin, the former Russian deputy prime minister and one-time head of the state space agency Roscosmos, were wounded.Credit:AP

A Francophone who represented Russia at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels for three years, Rogozin also told the ambassador he “fondly recalled” travelling with him to the Russia-leased space centre in Kazakhstan and the site of a crucial battle between Napoleon’s army and Russia in 1812.

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 Rogozin’s buttocks, according to reports at the time.

Rogozin was criticised at the time of the strike for being too carefree close to the front line. He also refuted 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.

Rogozin on Wednesday thanked Russian doctors for saving his life, saying he is “alive again and almost healthy”.

A piece of shrapnel removed from Rogozin’s body.

Up until the start of the invasion of Ukraine, President Macron had been wary of sending weapons to Ukraine and made repeated attempts to get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Telegraph, London

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