Russian drone kills two Ukrainian journalists in east: media

KYIV, Ukraine: A Russian drone killed two Ukrainian journalists and wounded another in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Thursday, their news outlet and regional officials announced.

Freedom Media, a state-funded news organisation, said the crew had been struck by a Russian Lancet drone while in their car at a gas station in the industrial city.

The news outlet named the killed television crew as 43-year-old Donetsk region native Olena Gramova and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, from Kramatorsk.

It added that another reporter, Alexander Kolychev, was hospitalised after the attack.

The Donetsk regional governor earlier announced details of the strike and posted images showing the charred remains of the journalists’ car.

The proliferation of cheap but deadly drones used both by Russian and Ukrainian forces has made reporting from frontline regions of Ukraine increasingly dangerous and unpredictable.

Thursday’s attack comes after a Russian state media correspondent was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Moscow-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

Earlier this month, French photojournalist Antoni Lallican was killed on assignment near the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Several journalists have been killed covering the war since Russia invaded in 2022, though precise tolls vary according to different monitors.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Lallican was the 14th killed by Russia’s army, while UNESCO said he was at least the 23rd media worker to have been killed on both sides of the front line.

Among them was AFP video journalist Arman Soldin, killed outside Kramatorsk in the nearby town of Chasiv Yar in May 2023, aged 32.

Kramatorsk, which had a pre-war population of around 150,000 people, is one of the few remaining civilian hubs in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.

Russian forces are approximately 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the city, where officials earlier this month announced the mandatory evacuation of children from some parts of the town and outlying villages.

Kremlin-supported separatists in 2014 captured Kramatorsk before being pushed back by Ukrainian forces.