A team of Russian surgeons successfully removed a live grenade stuck in a soldier’s body.
The soldier, Nikolay Pasenko, had been turned into a ‘human bomb’ after been hit by a grenade which smashed through his rib cage, stayed trapped inside him but failed to detonate while fighting in Ukraine.
According to Daily Mail UK, the medical team wore body armour, because they knew the grenade could detonate during the surgery with devastating effects at such close quarters.
Pasenko initially resisted surgery saying, “He did not want the doctors to suffer as the munitions could have exploded.”
“The ammunition was located between the aorta and the inferior vena cava, It’s not every day that you take an [explosive] out of a person, and in a place where moving to the right or left can lead to the death of the patient. When the ammunition ended up in a bucket of sand, everyone exhaled, smiled and laughed,” one of the surgeon was reported to have said.
Speaking after the surgery, Pasenko said, “I did not understand what happened. There was a blow to the edge of the armour and that was it. I did not lose consciousness – I just continued to move.”
Nikolay Pasenko
Pasenko, who is a junior sergeant, was hit by a Ukranian projectile fired from an automatic grenade launcher.
Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed the incident on Thursday.