Russia’s military has spent months leaving a well-documented trail of war crimes in Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin crony Dmitry Rogozin apparently thinks a tiny piece of shrapnel removed from his spine proves Russia is actually the victim.
Russia’s former space chief, still recovering from his injuries after he came under fire by Ukrainian troops while celebrating his birthday on occupied Ukrainian land, has sent an unsolicited missive to the French ambassador to Russia bemoaning his near-death experience—along with the shrapnel extracted from his back.
“It went through my right shoulder and got stuck in my fifth cervical vertebrae, just a millimeter away from killing me or making me an immobile invalid,” Rogozin wrote, according to a copy of the letter shared by Russia’s RIA Novosti.
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The man who has long cheered on Russian attacks against Ukraine that have killed and maimed thousands of Ukrainians asked French Ambassador Pierre Levy to give the shrapnel to French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Tell him that no one will escape responsibility for the war crimes of France, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany and other NATO countries in the Donbas,” he wrote.
Calling Ukraine’s targeting of Russian troops who’ve occupied the east of the country a “vile terrorist act,” Rogozin explained he was sending the shrapnel to France because it came from artillery supplied to Ukraine by the French military.
The self-pitying letter appears to be in stark contrast to Rogozin’s comments on the war just a few weeks prior to his injury, when he told Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov that he was “thoroughly convinced we [Russia] will take Kyiv.”
“It’s either us or them,” he said. “When we say ‘denazification’ [of Ukraine], what do we mean? Being proud of the fact that we killed 300 Ukrainian conscripts a day, or 1,000 a day? Well, yes. This is a battle, a war. No one has pity for anyone anymore.”
