A pro-war Russian TV star has been killed on the front line just hours after sharing a social media post mocking Ukraine. Anna Prokofyeva, 35, died in the Demidovka border area of Belgorod, Russia, where Volodomyr Zelensky’s forces have been making incursions.
Her death was reported by other Kremlin-backed war correspondents and later by the state-run TV station Channel One, where she worked. Just a day before, she said she was “somewhere on the border with country 404”, a reference to a common web page error – suggesting she believed Ukraine was a country that does not exist. Multiple other Russian media outlets reported her death on Tuesday, and major pro-Kremlin channel NTV said a cameraman working with her was wounded and hospitalised.
Ms Prokofyeva is the third pro-war propagandist journalist to die in two days, with another seriously injured. Announcing her death, pro-Putin military blogger Vladimir Romanov, said: “While carrying out an editorial assignment, Channel One war correspondent Anna Prokofyeva was killed. A brave, honest, and decent person. A professional.”
Her channel said: “Channel One war correspondent Anna Prokofieva died in the line of duty. It happened in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, where the Channel One film crew was blown up by an enemy mine. Cameraman Dmitry Volkov, who was with Anna, was wounded…. She had worked in the Spanish editorial office of the Rossiya Segodnya agency. She has been on Channel One since 2023, as a war correspondent, reporting from the [conflict] zone.”
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of targeting Russian state media journalists. She said: “They are being hunted. These are our journalists, these are war correspondents… And the fact that they were wearing vests with ‘Press’ identification marks speaks once again to the fact that, of course, they have become a target.”
A day earlier, two Russian war journalists from Vladimir Putin’s propaganda outlets were killed in occupied Ukraine. A third was seriously wounded when their car came under fire in Luhansk region. Their driver was also killed in the strike.
Alexander Fedorchak, 28, Izvestia military correspondent, was killed when the car carrying Russian media figures was hit in occupied Luhansk. Izvestia is controlled by pro-Kremlin National Media Group, headed by 72-year-old Putin’s lover Alina Kabaeva, 41, a former star rhythmic gymnast.
Fedorchak died alongside cameraman Andrei Panov, of Russian defence ministry TV channel Zvezda, and their driver Alexander Sirkeli, 45. Zvezda war correspondent Nikita Goldin was seriously wounded.
Mikhail Skuratov, a war correspondent for state news agency TASS, was wounded by shrapnel in a separate incident in Kursk region, it was reported. Zakharova alleged the journalists in the car were hit in “targeted artillery shelling by Kyiv”, adding: “The strike was carried out by high-precision MLRS munitions on a predetermined civilian vehicle with representatives of the press.”
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