The former head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced on Wednesday that he had sent President Emmanuel Macron the piece of shrapnel that injured him in Ukraine, fired according to him from a French Caesar cannon supplied to kyiv.

Mr Rogozin, who currently leads a group of military advisers providing assistance to separatist forces in Ukraine, was injured in the back in December during a Ukrainian strike on a hotel in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine under control Russian, which had caused several deaths and injuries.

Mr. Rogozin had assured that the incident had occurred at the time of a “work meeting” in the restaurant of the hotel. The Russian public television channel Rossia 24 had for its part affirmed that the ex-boss of Roscosmos was celebrating his 59th birthday there, with guests and musicians.

He had indicated after the strike that he had been operated on at the hospital because a piece of shell had lodged above his right shoulder blade.

Mr. Rogozin, an ardent supporter of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, explained that he had written to the French ambassador in Moscow, Pierre Levy.

“In this envelope, together with my letter, you will see a fragment of a shell from a French 155mm Caesar artillery piece,” Rogozin said in the open letter posted on Telegram.

"It punctured my right shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra, only a millimeter apart and it could have killed me or disabled me," he wrote.

Contacted by AFP, the French Embassy in Moscow did not wish to comment immediately.

The bombardment which injured Mr. Rogozin also killed two of his friends, explained the latter, adding: "All our victims are on your conscience".

"I ask you to hand over the fragment removed from my spine by the surgeons to French President Emmanuel Macron," the Russian official said. “And tell him that no one will escape responsibility for war crimes,” he added.