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Violence against journalists

Farewell ceremony for Russian VGTRK journalists killed in Ukraine to be held on June 20

The time and place of the journalists’ funeral will be announced later

© ITAR-TASS/Mikhail Pochuyev

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Russian journalists killed near Luhansk

MOSCOW, June 19. /ITAR-TASS/. A farewell ceremony for Russian VGTRK journalists killed in Ukraine's Luhansk will presumably take place on Friday, June 20, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) said on its website on Thursday. The time and place of the journalists’ funeral will be announced later.

“Igor will be buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in western Moscow,” it said. “The remains of sound engineer Anton Voloshin will be sent to a laboratory for genetic analysis, as it was requested by Anton’s parents,” the VGTRK said.

The day of a farewell ceremony for Voloshin would be announced upon receipt of laboratory results, it said.

The bodies of two Russian journalists who had been killed near Ukraine’s eastern city of Luhansk were delivered to Russia.

On Thursday morning, the bodies of the killed journalists — VGTRK’s special correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin — were delivered from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, the VGTRK said.

A three-member VGTRK camera crew got under mortar fire near Metallist village on the outskirts of Luhansk on June 17 at a time when they were shooting footage about members of the local self-defense forces who were helping the local residents to leave the area of military hostilities.

The journalists had "MEDIA" badges on their clothes. One of the shells burst literally under the reporters’ feet. Igor Kornelyuk was rushed to a hospital in Luhansk with serious wounds, but the doctors could not save him. Nothing was known about the fate of sound engineer Anton Voloshin for several hours until the only surviving member of the camera crew, cameraman Viktor Denisov, finally identified Voloshin’s body.

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