Russian Strike Injures US, European Journalists

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that a hotel in Eastern Ukraine housing European and American members of a Reuters team covering the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war was hit by a Russian missile, with the news agency reporting that one team member is missing and two others have been hospitalized.

"Three other colleagues have been accounted for," Reuters reported on Sunday, following a strike on Hotel Sapphire in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, that happened on Saturday evening where a six-person Reuters crew was staying.

The Associated Press reported that the strike was carried out by Russian forces.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian government's press team for comment via email on Sunday.

On Sunday, Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the hotel "was destroyed by a Russian 'Iskander' missile. Deliberately. Calculated," in reference to a Russian short-range ballistic missile.

The Ukrainian president said seven people were injured and one person was killed, adding that "the entire day was spent clearing the rubble." The AP and Zelensky reported that the injured individuals are from Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Newsweek has also reached out to Ukraine's Foreign Ministry for comment via email on Sunday afternoon.

In a Telegram post on Sunday afternoon, Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region, wrote in Ukrainian that a member of the Reuters team died, and six people were injured—four journalists and two local residents. He said that the "deceased is a British journalist."

Reuters has not published that a team member was killed as of Sunday afternoon.

Photographs online of the hotel show it reduced to rubble, with Ukrainian emergency services searching through the debris.

Ukraine's General Prosecutor's Office said in a Telegram statement on Sunday that it has launched a "pre-trial investigation" into the strike that it stated occurred 10:35 p.m. local time on Saturday.

Kramatorsk is one of the few cities in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control. Russia had previously engaged in armed conflict in the region since 2014, which the International Crisis Group says killed at least 14,000 people before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian forces continue to press on the region, gaining ground over the past two and a half years.

Recent years have been marked with extreme violence and attacks against journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, at least 116 journalists have been killed, "making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992." The organization currently shows that 43 journalists have been killed globally in 2024 and has not posted about this most recent strike.

Russia announced Thursday that it opened a criminal case against a CNN correspondent and two Ukrainian reporters, accusing them of illegally entering the country while covering an incursion by Ukraine's armed forces into the Kursk region. It had previously done so against two Italian journalists.

Since a surprise attack on August 6, Ukrainian forces have pressed into the Russian Kursk area over the past few weeks, branching into the neighboring area of Belgorod. The incursion marks the largest assault on Russian soil since World War II.

The AP reported on Sunday that officials said five people died in Ukrainian shelling in Russia's Belgorod and 12 other people were injured in Rakitone, Russia.

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