MOSCOW, June 26. /ITAR-TASS/. On Thursday, people will pay their last respects to Russian cameraman Anton Voloshin who died more than a week ago in shelling near the city of Luhansk in Ukraine’s embattled south-east.
The ceremony will start at 12pm in downtown Moscow’s studio of the Special Correspondent TV program, and later Voloshin will be buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery where his colleague, All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) special correspondent, Igor Kornelyuk was buried on June 20.
VGTRK’s Kornelyuk and Voloshin were killed by mortar fire on June 17 near Luhansk, a place of combat clashes between Ukrainian military forces and militia. They were filming a report on people’s self-defense soldiers taking refugees from the danger area. Their cameraman, Viktor Denisov, was lucky to escape death as he was at a distance from the TV crew. All the reporters were wearing signs marked PRESS.
Anton Voloshin's biography
Voloshin was 26. He was born on August 16, 1987, in the town of Khimki, the Moscow Region. In 2011, he graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute where he studied computer systems and network engineering. In May 2013, Voloshin was employed by the VGTRK’s news programs department.
In the winter of 2014, he went to Ukraine, covering violent anti-government protests in downtown Kiev’s Independece Square and then worked in Ukraine’s embattled the south-east.
Voloshin will be buried later than his colleague Kornelyuk because his relatives asked for a genetic expert examination.
Journlaists killed in Ukraine
The largest international and human rights organizations, as well as professional associations, condemned the murder of Russian journalists and demanded that the circumstances of what happened be thoroughly investigated. TV and radio companies, newspapers, magazines and Internet publications expressed their condolences.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to award the journalists the Order of Courage posthumously. The presidential press service said Kornelyuk and Voloshin were granted the award “for courage and heroism in carrying out their professional duties.”
Crisis in the south-east of Ukraine
Fierce clashes have been underway between the Ukrainian military and militias in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions that refused to recognize the authorities who had been propelled to power amid riots during a coup in Ukraine in February 2014. The regions' residents demanded the country's federalization.
Kiev’s military operation against federalization supporters in the Ukraine’s south-east involving armored vehicles, heavy artillery and attack aviation has killed hundreds of people, including civilians, left buildings destroyed and damaged and forced tens of thousands to cross the border from Ukraine to Russia.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who won the May 25 early presidential election in Ukraine and took office on June 7, announced a ceasefire in Ukraine’s south-east from June 20 until June 27. He also presented a peace plan to settle the situation in the south-east during his first working trip to the Donetsk Region.
Despite periodical reports that the ceasefire has been violated by Kiev, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Prime Minister Alexander Borodai said Monday, June 23, after talks on implementation of Poroshenko’s peace plan, that militias in Ukraine’s embattled south-east agreed to the ceasefire until June 27.