Russian drone kills two Ukrainian journalists on Donetsk eastern front line

According to their outlet and the Donetsk region regional governor, a Russian drone has attacked two Ukrainian journalists and injured another in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.

A Russian Lancet drone was used to kill Olena Gramova, 43, and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, according to Freedom Media, a state-funded news agency. Alexander Kolychev, a different reporter, was taken to the hospital following the attack.

The Donetsk regional governor earlier provided details about the strike and posted images of the journalists’ car’s burned remains, the AFP news agency reported.

Prior to joining the media in 2014, when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and began arming a separatist movement in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbass, Gramova, a native of Yenakiieve in the Donetsk region, had a “finance specialist” degree.

Karmazin was born in Donetsk, Kramatorsk, and elsewhere. He “joined Ukraine’s international broadcasting channels as a cameraman in 2021,” according to the outlet.

They were present from day one, covering war crimes, soldier stories, and evacuations, according to a post on X from the Kyiv Post.

Olena Hubanova, a journalist for Ukraine, and Yevhen Karmazin, a cameraman for the Russian Lancet, were killed when a drone tore through Kramatorsk during their reporting from the front lines.

They covered evacuations, war crimes, and soldier stories right from the beginning.

They are no longer there. pic. twitter.com/TNTN8H7nFd

One of the few remaining civilian hubs in the Donetsk region that is still under Ukrainian control is Kramatorsk, which had a population of about 150 000 before the war.

Russian forces are about 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the city, where officials earlier this month mandated the evacuation of young people from some towns and remote villages.

Unreal number of journalists are killed in conflict

Reporting from Ukraine’s front-line regions is becoming more dangerous as a result of the proliferation of cheap, deadly drones used by both Russian and Ukrainian forces.

A drone struck Antoni Lallican earlier in October in the eastern city of Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region, killing him.

According to Ukrainian forces cited by the European Federation of Journalists, a “targeted strike” from a first-person-view drone had killed Lallican, according to Ukrainian forces.

The exact number of journalists killed since the start of the 2022 war varies. According to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 17 journalists have been killed so far, both domestically and internationally. That number would increase to 19 with the deaths of Gramova and Karmazin.

At least 23 media workers were killed on both sides of the front lines, according to UNESCO earlier this month, including three Russian state media journalists in March. Russian correspondent Ivan Zuyev was killed in a drone strike in the southern Zaporizhia region in mid-October, according to state news agency RIA.

In recent years, there have been record journalists killed in conflicts, with deaths disproportionately higher in Gaza, where Israeli forces purposefully targeted media executives like Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri and freelance journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa.

Again, there are different reports regarding deaths since the two-year-old Gaza war started. By August of this year, 242 journalists had been killed, according to the UN. Shireen’s tally. More than 270 journalists and media workers were killed by Israeli forces over the same time, according to Ps, a monitoring website named after murdered Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Source: Aljazeera