Junior Sergeant Nikolay Pasenko is a lucky man to be alive after an ambush by Ukrainian forces left him with a grenade jammed just below his heart.
The explosive – fired from a Ukrainian automatic grenade launcher – shattered his ribs and damaged a lung before getting stuck near his spine.
The deadly bomb showed up on X-rays and the gunner initially balked at surgery.
Pasenko recalled: “I was against it. I did not want the doctors to suffer as the munitions could have exploded.”
“So we’ll blow up together,” was the reply he got from the head military surgeon Lt-Col Dmitry Kim when he said his lines.
The medics donned body armour vests and began operating despite warnings they could be blown up mid-surgery.
Medical experts reported that the chances of an explosion were “extremely high” but failure to operate would have left Pasenko at risk of fatal bleeding.
Part of a statement from the Russian defence ministry reads:
“Despite this, the military doctors together with their civilian counterparts donned body armour under their medical gowns and proceeded with this utmost intricate surgery.”
The operation was hailed a success and the soldier later woke up to thank the “hero” surgeons.
