A Ukrainian soldier removed an unexploded grenade from his chest

Senior officials in Kyiv revealed that medics extracted the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman and Hanna Maliar, Ukraine's deputy minister of defence, uploaded an image showing an X-ray of the grenade inside the man's body.

She wrote in a Facebook post: "Military doctors conducted an operation to remove a VOG grenade, which did not break, from the body of the soldier."

Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine's internal affairs ministerial adviser, described the procedure as one that would "go down in medical textbooks".

The operation had to be completed without using electrocoagulation – a method used to control bleeding during surgery – as the "grenade could detonate at any moment".

Gerashchenko wrote in a Telegram update on Thursday (12.01.23): "The unexploded part of the grenade was taken from under the heart. The grenade did not explode, but remained explosive."

He added that the injured soldier was thought to be about 28 years old.

Gerashchenko said: "There have never been such operations in the practice of our doctors. Similar was during the war in Afghanistan.

"About the current patient, I can say that he was born in 1994, now he is sent for rehabilitation. his condition is stable."

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