(Fixes garble in hradline)
KYIV (Reuters) -Two Ukrainian journalists were killed by a Russian drone in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Thursday in an attack that was condemned by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and described by Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman as a war crime.
Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin identified the journalists as Olena Hubanova and Yevhen Karmazin from Ukraine’s state-funded Freedom television channel. The channel, which broadcasts in Russian, confirmed their deaths and said they were in a car at a petrol station at the time of the strike.
Filashkin said they were hit by a Lancet, a costly and powerful drone often used against tanks and armoured vehicles.
“This tragedy is further evidence of Russia’s systemic war crimes against civilians,” human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram.
The general prosecutor’s office said a colleague of the two journalists had also been wounded and that it had opened a war crime investigation. It posted a photo of a destroyed red car and an image of two flak jackets marked “press” in the boot.
Zelenskiy said Russia had killed 135 media representatives during its war in Ukraine. He did not say how many of these were journalists.
“These are not accidents or mistakes, but a deliberate Russian strategy to silence all independent voices reporting about Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.
Russia did not immediately comment on his or Lubinets’ remarks.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Yuliia Dysa, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Ed Osmond)
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