Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has strongly condemned the Ukrainian military’s attack on Russian journalists in the Lugansk People’s Republic. According to reports, Kiev’s forces used a multiple rocket launcher to fire precision-guided munitions at a civilian vehicle carrying the press team.
On Monday evening (local time), the camera operator for the Russian television channel Swesda, Andrei Panov, the driver of the team, Alexander Sirkeli and the correspondent for the newspaper Iswestija, Alexander Fedortschak, lost their lives. Another reporter for the TV station, Nikita Goldin, was seriously injured and taken to the hospital. The channel claims that the Ukrainian military fired HIMARS rockets at the journalists’ vehicle.
Around the same time, Mikhail Skuratov, a war correspondent for the Russian news agency TASS, suffered splinter injuries in a targeted attack by Ukrainian units in the border area of Kursk.
Zakharova spoke of “another brutal act of violence by Ukrainian neo-Nazis against Russian journalists” whose professional duty is to report on events on the ground without carrying weapons. The latest terror attack, she said, demonstrates that Kiev is ready to commit any crime against the civilian population, including media representatives, who are protected under international law.
“The Kiev regime has once again demonstrated its terrorist and bestial nature” she stated.
As the Ukrainian leadership comes to realize that it is impossible to inflict damage on Russian forces on the battlefield, the more terrorist attacks will be carried out against Russian civilians and energy infrastructure, the foreign ministry spokeswoman emphasized.
All relevant international institutions and their representatives, particularly the UNESCO Director-General, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, are obliged to react to the ongoing “cold-blooded murders” of Russian media workers, Zakharova added.
She accused the mentioned organizations of “chronic inaction” and noted that they have either remained silent on violence against Russian reporters or provided empty excuses.