MOSCOW, June 30. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Channel One has confirmed that its cameraman Anatoly Klyan died in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
“Tonight, our colleague Anatoly Klyan, cameraman for the Channel One, died in Donetsk,” the TV channel’s statement said. “The tragedy happened near one of army units, where the crew came to film a report. At the site, shots were unexpectedly fired from the side of the servicemen. Anatoly Klyan received a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was 68 years old.”
The trip to the army unit was organized by the press service of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Journalists were travelling in a bus with soldiers’ mothers who intended to demand that their sons return home from the service.
After shots were fired, the journalists managed to get on a bus and drive off to the distance of approximately 500m from the site. Then, people got off the bus and saw a skyrocket, followed by renewed gunfire. At that moment, Anatoly Klyan was wounded. His colleagues took him to the hospital, but he died there from sustained wounds.
Earlier, Speaker of the Supreme Council of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic Vladimir Makovich said a journalist had died in the region. “A journalist was heavily wounded, doctors could not save him. He died in a hospital,” Makovich said. However, he did not specify what media the journalist represented.
Other cases of journalists' deaths in south-east Ukraine
The death of Anatoly Klyan is not the first case of journalist’s killing in the military operation that the Ukrainian authorities are conducting in south-eastern Ukraine.
Two correspondents from Russian central television and radio broadcasting company VGTRK, namely special correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin, were killed near the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk on June 17. They came under mortar fire near a roadblock of militia, when they were making a TV footage about people’s militias taking away refugees from the dangerous zone. Journalists were carrying identification media badges. Eyewitnesses said that the shell had exploded near the filming crew. Sound engineer Voloshin died at the spot, Kornelyuk died at the local hospital later.
Italian photo correspondent Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian interpreter Andrey Mironov were killed in mortar fire near the city of Sloviansk on May 24.