The 14-year-old was also killed in an attack that killed staff members of the Russian Izvestia newspaper and Zvezda TV channel.
Six people have been killed, including three Russian state media workers, including three Russian state media workers, including Ukraine’s Russian state media workers, according to Russian news outlets and officials.
The attack on Monday killed Alexander Fedorchak, a journalist for the Izvestia newspaper in Russia’s leading Prokremlin, and Andrei Panoff, a camera operator who worked for the Russian television channel Zvezda.
Pasechnik said the 14-year-old was also killed in an attack in the area’s Cremina district.
Izvestia said Fedorchak has entered the Luhansk region, which was captured by Russian invasion after reporting from the Kupiansk region of the nearby Kharkiv region, from the Kupiansk region, one of the areas that Russian troops have advanced in recent months.
“Izvestia correspondent Alexander Fedorchak was killed in a zone of special military operations,” the newspaper said, using Moscow’s term for the war with Ukraine.
Russia’s state-controlled English RT outlet posted an image of Fedorchak on social media, saying that the “death situation” of war correspondents “is not yet clear.”
Izvestia correspondent Alexander Fedorchak was killed in the SMO zone
His last report aired yesterday – he worked in the Kharkov area near Kupiansk
The circumstances of death are not yet clear pic.twitter.com/ujmlhphldf
– RT (@rt_com) March 24, 2025
Izvestia said the correspondent was killed “in the direction of Kupiansk.” This is a city where Russian troops are on the way under intense Russian attacks.
“His final report was literally aired the day before,” Izvestia said on its website.
The Zvezda Channel, sponsored by Moscow’s Ministry of Defense, later said its correspondent, Niki Tagoldin, was also seriously injured in the attack, and is described as a strike against a civilian vehicle.
Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on Russia’s claim that journalists were targeted.
Russian news outlets cited security sources saying the attack was carried out by Advanced Himars Rockets, which was supplied to Ukraine by the US.
Alexander Miloshnik, ambassador to the Russian Foreign Ministry, said there was evidence that the journalists were deliberately targeted.
“More details are revealed about the murders of these people, pointing to the planned and terrorist nature of strikes along with journalists and people,” he wrote in Telegram.
Figures from the Ukrainian National Journalists show that 18 Ukrainians and foreign journalists have been appointed and killed since the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022.
Another ten journalists were killed by bombs and artillery fire while not at work. Over 80 media employees were killed while serving in the Ukrainian military.
Alexander Martemyanov, a freelance reporter who works for Izvestia, was killed in Ukraine in January.
The Russians were particularly intense in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, consisting of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Russian forces have been focused on gaining more territory from Ukraine after the Russians failed to reach the capital, Kiyikh in the early stages of the war.
