A safety adviser working with a team of journalists for the Reuters news agency was killed on Sunday and two journalists were wounded after a missile hit the hotel in which they were staying in eastern Ukraine, Reuters said in a statement.
The strike hit the Hotel Sapphire in the city of Kramatorsk on Saturday where a six-person Reuters team had been lodging, a Reuters statement said.
“Two of our journalists are in hospital; one is being treated for serious injuries. Three other colleagues have been accounted for and are safe,” said the statement, identifying the security adviser who was killed as Ryan Evans. It did not provide more information. A Reuters article said Mr. Evans, 38, was a former British soldier who had been working with the news agency since 2022.
“We are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk,” the statement added.
It was not immediately clear whether the hotel had been deliberately targeted, but President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine blamed Moscow for the attack and said Russian forces had used an Iskander missile, a type of ballistic missile frequently used in Ukraine.
The strike was part of the “daily Russian terror which continues because Russia still has the means to do so,” Mr. Zelensky said in a speech posted online.
Russian forces have launched thousands of missiles at Ukraine since it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, as well as conducted a daily barrage of drone and artillery attacks. But it was not possible to determine responsibility for the attack on the hotel and there was no immediate comment from the Russian authorities.
Thousands of Ukrainian and international journalists have reported on the war, and Reporters Without Borders said in February that more than 100 journalists had been “victims of violence” in the conflict. Large news organizations often deploy safety advisers, many of whom have military backgrounds, in an effort to ensure security for their staff members working in major conflict zones.
The long front line in eastern Ukraine has been one of the deadliest parts of the country for journalists; its towns and cities, including Bakhmut and Sievierodonetsk, have been the site of some of the war’s fiercest fighting.
Before the war, Kramatorsk had a population of around 150,000 people, but it has been attacked repeatedly and was the site of one of the war’s deadliest attacks on civilians. Many people have heeded an evacuation order from the Ukrainian government.
The city lies around 16 miles west of the front line. The capture of Kramatorsk remains a long-term military objective for Moscow if it is to achieve its aim of securing the whole of the Donetsk region.
“The Russians hit Kramatorsk,” the head of the regional military administration, Vadym Filashkin, wrote on the Telegram messaging app, saying the attack took place overnight. He said that one person was missing and two others were injured. A nearby high-rise building was also attacked, he said, adding that emergency services were working to clear the debris.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense made no reference to an attack on Kramatorsk in its daily report on the fighting. The Russian state news agency TASS carried a report about the strike that quoted Reuters as having said the injuries were caused by “a suspected missile strike.”
Shelling and other forms of aerial attack take a daily toll on civilians in the Donetsk region, given its proximity to the front line. Mr. Filashkin said seven civilians were killed and 15 others were wounded the previous day during attacks on the city of Kostiantynivka, which is southeast of Kramatorsk, and other towns.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, and the pace of territorial change has slowed. But Moscow has been on the offensive this year, making gains in Donetsk after the failure of a Ukrainian counteroffensive last year to meet its key objectives. Trying to change the dynamic in the conflict, Ukraine began an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6.
That offensive was partly aimed at diverting Russian forces from the eastern front in the Donetsk region, the part of the long front line that has been most active this year, but that has slowed in recent days. Even so, Mr. Zelensky said on Sunday that Ukraine had advanced by one to three kilometers.
“We have taken control of two more settlements,” he said, giving no further details.
One aim of the incursion, he said, was to demonstrate that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was more interested in retaining territory Moscow has occupied in Ukraine than defending Russian villages.
Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it has occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine as well as a substantial part of Ukraine’s east.
Both sides have kept up a daily barrage of cross-border fire along Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia, even as the Kursk offensive has continued. That barrage continued into the weekend.
Shelling in the small Russian town of Rakitnoye, which is in the Belgorod region and around 15 miles from the border, killed five people and left 12 people wounded, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a post on Telegram on Sunday. “A difficult night for the whole region,” he said.
In northeastern Ukraine, Russian forces pounded the Sumy region with more than 74 artillery, mortar and drone strikes over the past 24 hours, the region’s military administration said on social media in a daily report late Saturday. Three people were killed and nine others were wounded.
There was no independent confirmation of either of the reports.
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