Two Ukrainian journalists were killed and another wounded in a Russian drone attack in eastern Ukraine an assault that President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned as part of Russia’s “deliberate campaign” against journalists.
Freedom Media, a Ukrainian state-funded outlet, said its team was hit by a Russian Lancet drone while inside their vehicle at a gas station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.
The outlet, which publishes news in Russian, identified the slain journalists as Olena Gramova, 43, from the Donetsk region, and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, from Kramatorsk. Their colleague, Alexander Kolychev, was hospitalized with injuries.
“These are not accidents or mistakes, but a deliberate Russian strategy to silence all independent voices reporting on Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine,”
Zelensky wrote on social media.
Thursday’s attack followed the death of a Russian state media correspondent in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Moscow-occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region.
Earlier this month, French photojournalist Anthony Lallican was killed while reporting near the front line in Donetsk.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, multiple journalists have been killed covering the war, though the total varies by monitoring group.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Lallican was the 14th journalist killed by Russian forces, while UNESCO reported he was at least the 23rd media worker to die while covering the conflict on both sides of the front line.
