by Martha Serafini
Roscosmo’s Dmitrii Rogozin came to Donetsk to serve as head of the shadowy military training group known as the Tsar’s Wolves
FROM OUR REPORTER Kyiv – While President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was returning to Kyiv, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and former Roscosmos Space Agency President Dmitry Rogozin was wounded, along with senior official Vitalii Khotsenko, in an attack outside of Donetsk on the evening of December 21.
Rogozin, who arrived in occupied Donbass to serve as head of the shadowy military training group The Tsar’s Wolves, which Russian media says is training fighters in Donbass for reconnaissance and assault operations, was at the Shesh-Besh restaurant, in the middle of a forested area south of the city limits located. There he celebrated his 59th birthday. But the party didn’t go very well. According to Russian media and Rogozin himself, two people were killed, including a bodyguard, and five others were injured. Rogozin was hospitalized after a small shrapnel penetrated his back, just inches from his spine, according to his personal Telegram account (Ukrainians say he was injured in the buttocks instead). The exact nature of Khotsenko’s injury is unknown, but Russia’s state news agency Tass reported that his condition was stable and not life-threatening.
Rogozin and Russia’s chief prosecutor in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, accused Ukraine of aggression and said it was a deliberate attack by Ukrainian heavy artillery. Someone leaked the information, and around 19:45 there were several high-precision shots, even in the place where we were directly, wrote Rogozin. They hit me with 120mm or 155mm shells. The investigation will identify the culprit.
As Interfax Russia reported, an anonymous assistant to Rogozin specified the likely weapon used, a French 155mm Caesar self-propelled howitzer. Ukrainian officials have not commented on the attack. However, the accuracy of the shot at a location hundreds of yards from any built-up area or infrastructure suggests that the likelihood of a announced shot at one or both men is high.
Political adviser and former Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko wrote in a derisive post that the attack was a “birthday present” from the Ukrainian armed forces. Herashchenko does not in any way represent the official Ukrainian position, but it is clear that the suspicions are justified. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has openly targeted Russian generals, of whom 14 were reportedly killed, mostly in the early months of the war.
December 23, 2022 (change December 23, 2022 | 00:13)
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