A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region on the border with Ukraine injured a war correspondent from the Chinese news outlet Phoenix TV, Russian authorities said, urging the United Nations to respond to the incident.
“A Ukrainian drone today struck the village of Korenevo in the Korenevsky district,” acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday.
“A 63-year-old correspondent, Lu Yuguang, who went to the border area on his own, was injured.”
Khinshtein said in a later post that the journalist had skin cuts to his head and after treatment, refused hospitalisation.
Russia’s foreign ministry called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other international organisations to “promptly respond and give a proper assessment” of the incident.
“The targeted attack .... indicates the intention of the Kyiv regime to silence and de facto destroy representatives of any media that seek to convey objective information,” Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry’s spokesperson, said in a Telegram post.
Phoenix TV reported the incident but has not issued a separate statement.
According to Russia’s state and official media outlets, Lu has been reporting on the war since its early days. Russia launched the war with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
Lu told Russia’s state news agencies that he was feeling fine.
“Western journalists are not visible at all (in Kursk),” Lu said in a video posted by TASS on social media, with his head in bandages,
“We, Chinese journalists, want to convey what happened in the Kursk region.” — Reuters
