A Russian drone has killed two Ukrainian journalists and wounded another in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, according to their outlet and the regional governor of the Donetsk region.
Freedom Media, a state-funded news organisation, said on Thursday that Olena Gramova, 43, and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, had been killed by a Russian Lancet drone while in their car at a petrol station in the industrial city. 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, according to the AFP news agency.
Freedom Media said that Gramova, a native of Yenakiieve in the Donetsk region, had originally trained as a “finance specialist”, but turned to journalism in 2014, the year when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, and started arming a separatist movement in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas.
Karmazin was born in Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk. The outlet said he “joined Ukraine’s international broadcasting channels as a cameraman in 2021”.
“From day one, they were there, covering evacuations, war crimes, soldier stories,” said the Kyiv Post in a post on X.
Kramatorsk, which had a pre-war population of about 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.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
