Two Journalists Killed, One Injured
A tragic incident has unfolded in Kramatorsk, an eastern Ukrainian city, where a Russian drone attack has claimed the lives of two journalists and left another injured, as reported by their news outlet and the regional governor of Donetsk.
Freedom Media, a state-funded news organization, announced on Thursday that Olena Gramova, 43, and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, were killed by a Russian Lancet drone while they were in their car at a gas station in this industrial city. Another journalist, Alexander Kolychev, was taken to the hospital following the attack.
The governor of the Donetsk region recently shared details about the strike and posted images that showed the burned remains of the journalists’ car, as reported by the AFP news agency.
Freedom Media mentioned that Gramova, who hails from Yenakiieve in the Donetsk region, initially trained as a “finance specialist.” However, she made the switch to journalism in 2014, the same year Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and began supporting a separatist movement in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas.
Karmazin, on the other hand, was born in Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk. The outlet noted that he “joined Ukraine’s international broadcasting channels as a cameraman in 2021.”
Kramatorsk, once home to around 150,000 residents before the war, stands as one of the last civilian strongholds in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.
Currently, Russian forces are positioned about 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the city. Earlier this month, officials announced a mandatory evacuation for children from certain areas of the town and nearby villages.
The rise of inexpensive yet lethal drones, utilized by both Russian and Ukrainian forces, has made reporting from the front lines of Ukraine increasingly perilous.
In early October, French photojournalist Antoni Lallican tragically lost his life to a drone strike near the eastern city of Druzhkivka, situated in the Donetsk region.
According to Ukrainian forces, Lallican was killed in a “targeted strike” from a first-person-view drone, which allows operators to visually confirm their targets before launching an attack, as reported by the European Federation of Journalists.
The exact number of journalists who have died since the war began in 2022 varies. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists reports that 17 journalists—both Ukrainian and international—have been killed thus far. The recent deaths of Gramova and Karmazin would raise that number to 19.
Earlier this month, UNESCO stated that at least 23 media workers have been killed on both sides of the front line, including three Russian state media journalists in March. In mid-October, Russian war correspondent Ivan Zuyev was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in the southern Zaporizhia region, according to the state news agency RIA.
In recent years, we’ve seen record numbers of journalists losing their lives in conflict zones, a trend that has been particularly exacerbated by the situation in Gaza, where Israeli forces have intentionally targeted media personnel like Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif and Mohammad Salama, Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, and freelance journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa, who worked for AP.
Two Journalists Killed, One Injured
