Russian war correspondent killed by Ukrainian drone, Izvestia says

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian war correspondent Semyon Eremin, who worked for the Russian daily Izvestia, was killed on Friday in a Ukrainian drone attack in southeastern Ukraine, the newspaper said.

Izvestia said Eremin, 42, died of wounds suffered when a Ukrainian drone attacked while he was returning from a trip to a Russian unit in the Zaporizhzhia region.

“Izvestia war correspondent Semyon Eremin was killed on April 19 during an attack by Ukrainian FPV drones in the Zaporizhzhia direction where he had gone to film a report,” Izvestia said.

His last report was about Russia’s side of the drone war, Izvestia said.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Russia’s foreign ministry called the killing an “act of revenge for the honest performance of journalistic duty”.

It urged the “relevant” international organisations and human rights defenders to condemn what it described as the “cruel murder” of yet another Russian journalist.

Izvestia said Eremin had sent reports from many of the hottest battles in Ukraine’s eastern regions during the 25-month-old war, including Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops for nearly three months in 2022.

He had also reported from Maryinka and Vuhledar, towns at the centre of many months of heavy fighting.

Intense drone and artillery battles – along with punitive restrictions on journalists on both sides of the 1000 km (600 mile) front – have made the Ukraine war very dangerous and very difficult to cover.

At least 15 journalists have been killed in the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Ron Popeski and Vladimir SoldatkinEditing by Chris Reese, Shri Navaratnam and Toby Chopra)