Russia alleges journalist killed by drone attack in occupied Ukraine, calls on UN to condemn Kyiv

Russia is demanding the United Nations condemn Kyiv following an alleged drone attack that it claims killed a journalist working for a Russian outlet and injured several others.

Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported Saturday that its freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov died from his injuries after the drone hit the vehicle he was traveling in on the Donetsk-Horlivka highway, in Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), where the incident allegedly took place, said Martemyanov had been returning from a reporting assignment in the city of Horlivka at the time.

Pushilin said two journalists from the state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti and two from the pro-Russian publication Bloknot Donetsk who were in the car with Martemyanov had also been “lightly injured” in the strike and were receiving medical assistance.

Bloknot Donetsk said its journalists had survived by “jumping out of the moving car” and sustained shrapnel wounds, concussions, and bruises.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the incident “a deliberate murder,” and accused Kyiv of trying to “eliminate” its “ideological opponents.”

She demanded the UN and other international organizations condemn Kyiv for the strike. “All those responsible for the crime against Russian journalists will be identified and will face deserved and inevitable punishment,” she added.

Russia would raise the issue at an upcoming UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Izvestia quoted Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy as saying.

This is a developing story.