One Russian state TV reporter was killed, and her cameraman was injured in a landmine blast in Russia’s Belgorod province close to the border with Ukraine, state media said, as reported by Reuters.
Anna Prokofieva, 35, and her cameraman Dmitry Volkov were reporting the war when their car drove over a landmine which was planted by the Ukrainian army, the Pervy Kanal TV said. “She was killed while fulfilling her professional mission,” the channel declared.
The Belgorod region has suffered regular drone raids and shelling by Ukraine. Unofficial accounts indicate ground battles are underway in the area while Ukrainian troops have been pulling out of Kursk, yet another Russian border region.
Early in the week, a Tuesday artillery strike within the Moscow-occupied Luhansk region left six dead, including two Russian reporters and their driver, according to Reuters news agency quoting Russian media.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, almost 20 journalists have died, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
Who Was Anna Prokofieva?
Moscow Times reported that Prokofieva had reported on the Ukraine war for Channel One since 2023. Her last Telegram message, posted Tuesday, was a photo of her in combat fatigues with a head-mounted camera, sitting in a forest.
She posted it with a quote that read “country 404,” a pro-Kremlin bloggers’ jibe that compares Ukraine to the “404 file not found” online error.
Russia-Ukraine War Updates
In the meantime, Russian drones hit major Ukrainian cities overnight while President Volodymyr Zelensky was on his way to Paris for an emergency top-level summit with European leaders to firm up Kyiv’s position in possible peace talks.
The Ukrainian air force intercepted or jammed the majority of the 86 explosive drones and decoys fired by Russia, Bloomberg said. Some got through and caused extensive damage in Kharkiv and Dnipro, the second- and third-largest cities in Ukraine, respectively.
Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, was hit by drones on Wednesday evening, wounding 11 in the city and at least seven in Zolochiv, a town nearby, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram.
Drones struck central Dnipro late in the night as well, injuring three people and destroying apartment blocks and infrastructure, regional governor Mykola Lukashuk reported. Potyomkin Palace, an 18th-century symbol of Russia’s imperial past that is now a youth center, was also hit, city mayor Borys Filatov reported.
These attacks overlapped with Zelensky’s visit to France for an emergency defense meeting, where more than 30 leaders gathered to talk about the war. The gathering took place as former American President Donald Trump indicated that he would try to advance a rapid resolution, excluding Europe in the process.
