MOSCOW, June 18. /ITAR-TASS/. “No breaking news cost lives of our guys”, said MP Mikhail Markelov, First deputy chief of the State Duma Committee on Affairs of Public Associations and Religious Organizations. The lawmaker thus commented on the tragic death of Russian journalist Igor Kornelyuk and video engineer Anton Voloshin, who had worked for the All-Russia State Television and Radio Company VGTRK. Both were killed in an artillery attack near Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, despite wearing ‘TV’ identification symbols on their clothes.

“I think top managers of TV channels should restrict visits of our people to the conflict area or at least not send new groups to the southeast of Ukraine,” Markelov suggested.

“Besides, we should urgently demand that OSCE should give guarantees of security for our journalists because the Kiev administration does not control the situation in the war zone,” Markelov stressed.

“The military and political agenda in the southeast of Ukraine has still been dictated by neo-Nazis from Right Sector and the radicals who belong to the so-called ‘national guards’,” the MP said.

He called the tragic death of the Russian journalists near Luhansk “a premeditated murder." "All the facts available have proved that despite objections voiced by the Kiev authorities who claimed it was an accidental shot.

“How can one explain the ‘accidental shots’ that kill women and senior people every day? Are more than 100,000 refugees a mere coincidence? Was an attack on the Russian embassy in Kiev a non-premeditated and accidental act either?” the MP stressed, asking a rhetorical question.