A Russian TV journalist, Anna Prokofieva, was killed on Wednesday while on assignment in the Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border. The First Channel, her employer, confirmed her death and reported that the cameraman, Dmitri Volkov, was injured in the incident.
Prokofieva was filming a report in the early morning near the village of Demidovka, an area close to active fighting. Initially, there were different accounts of the incident, with some reports suggesting she was killed by a drone strike or a fatal shrapnel wound, while others claimed she was killed by a landmine. The First Channel later stated that the military correspondent of the First Channel, Anna Prokofyeva, died in the line of duty. She was killed in the Belgorod region near the Ukraine border, where the TV team hit a mine. The cameraman, Dmitri Volkov, who accompanied Anna, was wounded.
The military blogger Vladimir Romanov was the first to report that his colleague was killed on Wednesday while on assignment. Romanov shared on his Telegram channel that Prokofieva was working near the village of Demidovka in the Krasnoyarushki district. In recent days, Romanov himself reported from this area, stating that the front line currently runs through the heavily contested village. It is located only three kilometers from the Ukrainian border and the Kursk region.
The TV team hit a mine, which also severely injured the cameraman accompanying the correspondent, Dmitri Volkov. Volkov was taken to the Kursk Regional Hospital and is being artificially ventilated, according to the acting governor of Kursk, Alexander Khinstein.
Since 2023, Anna Prokofieva has been reporting from the zone of military special operation. In the last days, she reported from the recently liberated city of Sudscha, where she actively participated in the evacuation of civilians from the area. In her last report, she showed the work of drone operators in the Kursk region.
The correspondent graduated in journalism from the University of Friendship of Peoples and spoke fluent Spanish. Initially, she worked for the Spanish department of the news agency Rossija Segondnja. In 2023, she became a war correspondent for the First Channel, Russia’s most-watched TV channel and reported on the Ukraine conflict.
This is the fourth death of a Russian journalist in the past two days. Earlier this week, three members of a TV team were killed in a Ukrainian attack in the Lugansk People’s Republic. War correspondents are exposed to countless dangers. Lately, more journalists have died in drone attacks that can target quickly moving objects like cars. Journalists or civilians can also be killed during an evacuation. Even the war correspondent Patrick Lancaster and his companions narrowly escaped death when they were pursued by a drone in the Kursk region and the correspondent captured the pursuit on camera.
The death of the military correspondent is a consequence of the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, according to the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, to TASS. “Journalists can be killed as massively as in a natural disaster” she said. Zakharova stated that the Kiev regime has “targeted not only journalists but also international legal principles that are meant to protect them.” She also commented on the death of other Russian journalists in the conflict zone, calling it “terror” in an interview with the Sputnik radio station.