Dmitry Rogozin to be operated on in Moscow, he has puncture wound and concussion, his assistant says 

Dmitry Rogozin, the ex-director of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos who was wounded during a shelling in Donetsk, will be operated on in a Moscow hospital in a several days’ time, RBC media outlet reports, citing Rogozin’s assistant.

According to the interlocutor of the media outlet, the doctors will operate on Rogozin to be able to extract the shrapnel stuck near his spinal cord. 

“[Mr. Rogozin] has a puncture wound — a 8x6 mm metal shrapnel entered above the area of the right shoulder blade, near the spinal cord. By miracle his lung hadn’t been punctured. Furthermore, he has a concussion. He has received no other wounds,” the assistant claims.

Aside from Rogozin, two military advisers injured during the shelling in Donetsk were transported to Moscow. Two other wounded military advisers continue to remain in Donetsk in critical condition, a third one is in a hospital in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

According to Rogozin’s assistant, the ex-director of Roscosmos will attend the funeral ceremony of Mikhail Bridasov, his old assistant who was killed during the shelling, before the surgery.

In the early hours of 22 December, the hotel in Donetsk where Rogozin was celebrating his birthday was shelled.

“This hotel was always crowded; despite the war, people still had their celebrations. The entry was at the back of the building which allowed our group to come and go without attracting the attention of guests and visitors,” he previously said.

According to Rogozin, among the people who were with him during the shelling were the “chairman of the DPR government” Vitaliy Khotsenko and the “head” of the Donetsk region city of Horlivka Ivan Prikhodko.

The “head of the Donetsk’s ‘people’s republic’ [DPR]” Denis Pushilin previously declared that two people had been killed in the shelling.