MOSCOW: The Russian media outlet Izvestia said on Saturday that a Ukrainian drone strike killed its reporter near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian army launched a drone strike on a civilian car carrying Izvestia’s freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov,” the daily reported on its Telegram channel.

“The car was located far from the line of contact.” Izvestia said the car was travelling on a highway linking Donetsk, the Russian-held main town of Donetsk region, and the city of Horlivka to the north.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, writing on her ministry’s website, denounced the incident as “deliberate murder”. Zakharova described it as “another brutal crime in a series of bloody atrocities” of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government “which openly resorts to terrorist methods to eliminate its ideological opponents”.

Data previously provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s RIA news agency said two of its correspondents travelling with Martemyanov were injured in the incident, along with two journalists working for a local publication in Donetsk.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2025