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One member of the Reuters news team was killed and two others were injured after a Russian missile attack on their hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.
The Sapphire Hotel, where the six-person team was staying, was attacked on Saturday night, Reuters said in a statement on Sunday.
The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said late Sunday that the body of a British citizen had been found in the rubble of the hotel.
The Financial Times understands the deceased was a security adviser to the Reuters team. The events at the hotel were confirmed by one of the two hospitalised journalists, but the FT is not publishing the identities of the team at the request of that injured party.
The prosecutor general’s office said in an earlier statement on the Telegram messaging service that it had opened a “pre-trial investigation” into the attack, which is said to have occurred at 10:35 p.m. local time on Saturday.
“Russian forces attacked the city of Kramatorsk, possibly using Iskander-M missiles,” the report said. Iskander is a ballistic missile with a range of up to 500km.
Prosecutors said the two journalists, a 38-year-old and a 40-year-old, were being treated for blast-related injuries, including brain bruising, a broken leg and multiple cuts.
Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said a high-rise residential building was also damaged in the attack. Rescue workers continued to search for the Reuters staff while clearing the rubble on Sunday.
Russian military bloggers and politicians bragged about the attack on Telegram, falsely claiming that Kremlin forces had attacked a military facility.
“In Kramatorsk, an airstrike was carried out on the Sapphire Hotel building, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are usually stationed, according to preliminary data,” wrote Oleg Tsaryov, a former Ukrainian MP who now supports Russia’s war against his homeland.
Kyiv condemned the attack, with Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi saying “another brutal and targeted Russian attack hit the residential area of Kramatorsk last night, injuring foreign media journalists in a hotel”.
“Targeted attacks on media have become a systematic Russian war tactic. These barbaric war crimes must be condemned, prosecuted and punished,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Russia has repeatedly attacked hotels where foreign media and humanitarian organizations are known to be staying. An attack on the Kramtorsk Hotel and Ria Pizza Neighborhood Eateries June 2023 killed 13 people, including journalists, humanitarian workers and soldiers dining at the restaurant.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 15 journalists and media workers have been killed while on duty during the war.
Saturday’s attack was one of a series of Russian missile and drone attacks overnight on northern and eastern Ukraine. The air force said its defense systems intercepted most of the missiles and drones over the northeastern regions of Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv.
According to local authorities, an earlier Russian attack on Saturday on a residential area in Kostyantynivka, 30km south of Kramatorsk, killed five civilians.
The latest airstrikes come amid a Ukrainian offensive in Russia’s Kursk region that began on August 6. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces in the Donetsk region continue to advance toward the Pokrovsk military and logistics base, 80km southwest of Kramatorsk.
