A Ukrainian soldier has had successful surgery to remove an unexploded grenade from his chest, senior officials in Kyiv have said.

Surgeons removed the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman, while two sappers ensured the operation was conducted safely, said Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, who uploaded an image apparently showing an X-ray of the ordnance inside the soldier’s body.

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

Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s internal affairs ministerial adviser, said the team of sappers neutralised the munition, and described the procedure as one that would “go down in medical textbooks”.

The operation was carried out without using electrocoagulation — a common method to control bleeding during surgery — because “the grenade could detonate at any moment”, Maliar said.

One image showed the surgeon holding the explosive after the surgery was performed.

The soldier has since been sent for further rehabilitation and recovery.

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