MOSCOW, July 01, /ITAR-TASS/. A ceremony of paying last respects to the cameraman of Russia’s Channel One, Anatoly Klyan who was killed in the much-troubled Donetsk of Ukraine region Sunday, will most likely be held Wednesday, July 2, at the Ostankino Television Center in Moscow, well-informed sources told Itar-Tass.
The exact date and place of Anatoly Klyan’s burial will be announced later.
His body was delivered by a specially chartered flight to Moscow overnight to Tuesday.
Anatoly Klyan was born January 23, 1946. He spent 40 years working for Soviet and Russian television, in the course of which he had thousands of filming sessions and hundreds of business trips to the countries swept by armed conflicts like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
He left on his last mission - for the Donetsk region - May 28 and his colleagues say he was supposed to return to Moscow July 1.
On the night from Sunday to Monday, June 30, Anatoly turned out to be riding in a bus that was trapped in gunfire. He received lethal wounds.
The tragic incident unfolded in the area of military base No. 1428 located near the township of Avdeyevka, some 15 km away from Donetsk. The reporters were riding in the bus together with a group of mothers of conscript soldiers, who were making the trip in a bid to take their sons, mostly teenage boys, back home.
When the gunfire began, the reporters managed to get on the bus and move about 500 meters away from the military base. They got off the bus then but a pistol flare light appeared in the sky immediately after that and fire from automatic assault rifles was opened.
Anatoly was wounded. His fellow-reporters gave him first aid and rushed him to the nearest outpatient clinic by hitching a ride on a private car but medics did not manage to save his life.
This is not the first case of a Russian reporter dying in Ukraine. Earlier last month, the reporter working for the All-Russia Broadcasting Company, Igor Kornelyuk, and sound engineer Anton Voloshin were killed by gunfire in the Donetsk region when they were making footage of local self-defence force fighters helping civilians to get out of a dangerous area.
International organizations, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN have condemned a yet another act of violence against Russian reporters in Ukraine and have demanded that the authorities in Kiev do a thorough investigation of the incident.
Russia’s Investigations Committee has instituted a criminal case over Anatoly Klyan’s death. Condolences to his family and friends have been expressed by top state officials, diplomatic mission of other countries, and professional communities.