Journalists from Vesti Lugansk came under fire in Kremennaya. The Russian Defense Ministry press service officer accompanying them died.

A film crew from the Vesti Lugansk channel came under fire near the town of Kremennaya in the Lugansk region, controlled by Russian troops.

According to the Russia-1 channel, correspondent Artem Yundas and cameraman Denis Shum arrived on April 10 to film at a tank battalion in Serebryansky forestry. They were accompanied by Major Evgeny Polovodov, senior officer of the press center of the West group of troops.

During artillery shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a representative of the press service of the Russian Ministry of Defense was killed. Yundas received a concussion, Shuma was hospitalized with a shrapnel wound to his leg.

Polovodov was involved in organizing the work of journalists at the front and himself reported from the front line, the state channel notes. According to Kommersant, Polovodov was 33 years old. Since 2015, he has been an officer in the information support unit in Voronezh, and in 2021 he worked in Syria. With the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine, he became part of the press center of the Western group of Russian troops. He is survived by his wife and young son.

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, demanded that relevant international structures condemn the attack on journalists. “We regard this incident as another criminal act of the Zelensky regime, which continues to consider domestic journalists and military officers as priority targets for fire, and, moreover, openly flaunts this. Ukrainian militants are targeting unarmed civilian correspondents, photographers and cameramen,” the Foreign Ministry said in a commentary.