Moscow has accused Kiev’s forces of deliberately targeting reporters covering the conflict
Chinese journalist Lu Yuguang was injured in a Ukrainian drone strike in Russia’s western Kursk Region, officials have said. The reporter told TASS that a UAV struck while the Phoenix TV crew was filming an interview with local residents.
According to Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein, Lu was taken to hospital with head injuries. He added that Ukrainian forces targeted the village of Korenevo, located less than 30 kilometers from the border.
The journalist told TASS he refused hospitalization because his injuries were “light” and he “had a lot of work here.” The Russian news agency published a video of Lu with a bandaged head.
Lu expressed “deep gratitude” to Russian combat medics, who treated him at the scene and stitched his wounds. “There was a lot of blood,” he said, adding that the medics initially feared the injuries were more serious.
According to Lu, a first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drone hit the crew as they were speaking to locals outside their homes. “We were recording a standup when an FPV drone flew by. And that was it,” he told TASS, noting that he was wearing a press vest. “They did not care.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the attack as a “terrorist act.”
“The targeted strike on a Chinese news crew shows Kiev’s intent to silence and effectively eliminate any media workers seeking objective coverage of the conflict,” she wrote on Telegram.
Lu, 63, is a veteran military correspondent who has worked in Russia since the early 2000s. He covered the 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan and has received numerous awards for his work. Since 2022, he has been reporting on the Ukraine conflict, including from the front lines.
This is not the first time journalists have been targeted by Ukrainian forces. In March, a Russian Izvestia newspaper crew was hit by artillery fire, killing a journalist, cameraman, and driver, and severely injuring another reporter. Two days later, a Channel One correspondent was killed while on assignment in Russia’s Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine.
