A correspondent for the Russian news outlet Izvestia, Semyon Yeryomin, has been killed in a Ukrainian kamikaze drone attack in Zaporozhye Region, the outlet reported on Friday.
Yeryomin’s crew was filming near the village of Priyutnoye on Friday at the positions of a battalion of Russian troops. Yeryomin had recently been reporting about the Russian military’s attempts to divert attacks by Ukrainian kamikaze UAVs. On the way back from a filming location, the crew’s vehicle was attacked by a drone. According to witnesses who spoke to Izvestia, Yeryomin was fatally injured in the attack and later died from his wounds.
Yeryomin had been working in the combat zone since the conflict began in February 2022 and had been awarded the medal For Merit to the Fatherland II Degree for his work covering the conflict.
Many of Yeryomin’s colleagues expressed their condolences over his death, including Izvestia General Director Vladimir Tyulin.
“He did his duty to tell the truth. We will do everything to ensure that his death does not go unpunished. This is our duty to him, to his loved ones, to everyone who continues his work,” Tyulin stated.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called Yeryomin’s death a “bloody crime,” noting that it “cannot be considered anything other than an act of revenge for the honest performance of a journalistic duty.”
“We regard this purposeful and cold-blooded murder of a journalist as another confirmation of the ugly terrorist nature of the Zelensky regime, which has opened a real hunt for Russian media workers, military officers and public figures, who... reveal the truth to the world community, present undeniable facts about the crimes of the militants of the Kiev regime,” she said in a statement on Saturday.
The UN also condemned the attack that resulted in Yeryomin’s death, with spokesman Farhan Haq telling the news agency TASS that the global body opposes the killing of journalists and believes that each such case requires a full investigation.
According to military expert Gennady Alekhin, who spoke to Izvestia, drones often target journalists specifically.
“This is not the first case of a targeted attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on media representatives,” Alekhin noted.
There have been a number of deaths of media figures linked with the Ukraine conflict over the past two years. These include Boris Maksudov, a Russian journalist from Russia 24 TV, RIA Novosti war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev, Oleg Klokov – director of Kherson’s Tavria TV, and Kaliningrad RuBaltic correspondent Aleksey Ilyashevich – all killed while covering the conflict on the ground.
Moscow has also accused Kiev of a number of targeted assassinations of Russian public figures, including journalist Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. Kiev has never officially claimed responsibility for these killings.