Ryan Evans, 38, a British Reuters security adviser who was part of a six-man team in Kramatorsk covering developments in the Russia-Ukraine war, was killed and two of his reporters were injured when a hotel was hit during a shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. , announced the international news agency yesterday Sunday.
The hotel where the Reuters team was staying was hit by a missile, the agency explained. Two other members of the group, journalists, were injured and taken to hospital; one is in serious condition. They are US and Ukrainian nationals, according to the media outlet.
Kramatorsk, the last major city in Donbas (eastern Ukraine) under Ukrainian control, is about twenty kilometers west of the front line.
Ryan Evans, a former soldier, has been working with Reuters since 2022, advising its reporters on security in Ukraine, Israel, the Paris Olympics and elsewhere.
The remaining three members of the team are safe and sound.
The Reuters message
“We are urgently trying to gather more information about the strike, in cooperation with Kramatorsk authorities, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families,” Reuters said in a statement. “Our deepest condolences and thoughts go out to Ryan’s family and loved ones. He had been a great help to our journalists in covering events around the world and we will miss him terribly,” the agency added.
Zelensky’s condolences
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the hotel was hit “absolutely deliberately” by Russia’s Iskander — a ballistic missile capable of hitting targets up to 500 kilometers away. “A simple hotel was destroyed by a Russian Iskander”, he said yesterday, and it was “absolutely a deliberate blow, premeditated (…) Our condolences to the family and friends” of the victim, he added, calling on the whole world “not to stop putting pressure on the state -terrorist,” referring to Russia, whose armed forces invaded his country’s territory in February 2022.
No comment from Moscow
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond when asked by Reuters for comment. The agency noted that it was unable to independently verify whether the hotel was hit by a Russian missile, nor whether the specific building was indeed targeted.
The hotel was hit at 22:35 (local and Greek time) on Saturday, “probably by an Iskander-M missile,” Ukraine’s Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office said, adding that the body of a British citizen was later found in the wreckage. The prosecutor’s office is conducting a preliminary investigation into the bombing, he added.
The agency’s partner’s death came during a particularly deadly weekend in both Ukraine and Russia, with at least 20 dead in various bombings on both sides of the border. In Ukraine, at least 14 deaths were counted: seven in the Donetsk region, another 4 in Sumy, and another 3 in Kherson. In Russia, six people were killed in Ukrainian strikes in the Belgorod region.
According to the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 11 journalists have been killed and 35 others injured in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.
#Ukraine #Reuters #journalist #killed #hotel #bombing
