An unexploded grenade was removed from the chest of a Ukrainian soldier in a first-of-its-kind surgery, according to a senior Kiev official, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said. operation to remove a VOG grenade, which did not break, from the soldier’s body,” Maliar explained in a Facebook post.
The deputy minister posted an image of an x-ray in which the bomb is seen inside the soldier’s body and a photo of a surgeon observing the grenade after surgery. The operation was performed without using electrocoagulation (a method to control bleeding during surgery) because “the grenade could explode at any moment,” Maliar stressed, adding that two sappers were present during the surgery to ensure that was conducted safely.
A team of sappers later neutralized the bomb, said the ministerial adviser for internal affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, defining the intervention as one of those “that will enter the medical textbooks”. The unexploded part of the grenade was under the wounded soldier’s heart, Gerashchenko said.