RT’s Igor Zhdanov and a local producer came under fire near the embattled Donbass town of Severodonetsk on Friday. They escaped unharmed, but, according to Zhdanov, two Reuters journalists in a car nearby were injured and their driver was killed.
“At first it looked as if they hit a landmine: the car flipped over and caught fire,” the RT correspondent wrote on his Telegram channel. “The driver died on the spot. The journalists were hospitalized. Our crew is fine.”
“They had waited for us to drive on a road, which, as it turned out, had been shelled before, and only then began the shelling, using a drone to adjust the fire. Both of our vehicles were civilian,” Zhdanov said.
There has been no comment from Reuters so far.
Heavy fighting was reported in and around Severodonetsk as Russian and Donbass forces continued their offensive against the Ukrainian Army. Sergey Gayday, a senior local Kiev-appointed official, said on Thursday that most of the town had been wrestled away from Ukrainian control.
Valentin Gvozdev, a reporter for the Russian Defense Ministry-run Zvezda TV channel, was wounded in Severodonetsk on Thursday. He said that Donbass fighters had seized the majority of the residential areas, while Ukrainian artillery was shelling the town.