On 16 June, Nikita Tsitsagi, a military correspondent of the News.ru news portal, was killed by a targeted UAV attack by armed formations of the Kiev regime while performing his professional duties in the Donetsk people’s republic. A drone launched by Ukrainian militants targeted the Russian journalist while he was preparing a report in the area of the Nikolsky Monastery near Ugledar.
Tsitsagi has been in the combat zone in the DNR since 2022, publishing materials about the AFU strikes on Donetsk, Belgorod and Moscow. In June 2023 he received the ‘Editorial Board’ award for his report from Shebekino ‘Everything is burning and there is nothing’.
We express our sincere condolences to the family and friends of N. Tsitsaga, who died fulfilling his professional duty.
This is the second attack on media personnel with a similar pattern in a week. On 13 June, a NTV film crew came under fire from Ukrainian militants’ UAVs, killing cameraman Valery Kozhin and seriously wounding correspondent Aleksei Ivliev.
The brutal murder of N. Tsitsaga is yet another grave crime of the Banderite regime, which has on its conscience numerous civilian lives. We are convinced that the perpetrators will receive the punishment they deserve.
We demand from the relevant international organisations and structures, first of all from the Director General of UNESCO, whose direct responsibility is to respond to cases of attacks and murders of journalists, to immediately and decisively condemn this cold-blooded crime.
