MOSCOW, October 30 /TASS/. An RT crew came under mortar fire near the militia-held city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Thursday. None of the journalists was hurt, the TV channel press service said.
The shelling started when RT correspondent Anna Knishenko, cameraman Alexander Zhukov and assistant Nikolay Bocharov, all wearing bright blue bullet proof jackets with the word PRESS written on them, were shooting a story about a militia checkpoint on the frontline.
The shooting could have started because of the crew’s arrival which had stirred some activity near a road.
“It is noteworthy that the militia forces are not using artillery at all. All their guns are silent. They did not show or move anything even when we came,” Knishenko said adding that the militias were strictly observing the ceasefire.
Knishenko said that three or four shells had been fired in their direction. The journalists safely left the territory under fire thanks to the militia’s clear instructions.
It’s not the first time that an RT crew comes under fire in Ukraine.
Earlier this year two journalists of the RT’s video agency Ruptly came under fire near the city of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine.
The shooting was opened from two Ukrainian APCs for no apparent reason.
Ruptly’s team said that a crew of the St. Petersburg TV network, Channel 5, was also in the same car. Luckily, the bullets did not hit the vehicle.
On May 24, Italian photo correspondent Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian interpreter Andrey Mironov were killed in mortar fire near the city of Slavyansk.
Two correspondents from Russian state television and radio broadcasting company VGTRK, special correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin, were killed near the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk on June 17.
On September 3 Russia's news agency Rossiya Segodnya (formerly RIA Novosti) confirmed the death of photojournalist Andrei Stenin, who disappeared on August 5 working in eastern Ukraine. His car came under fire and burnt out on a road near the city of Donetsk.