Russia says two journalists, driver, killed in Ukraine's targeted strike

(Reuters) -A targeted Ukrainian artillery strike on Monday killed six people including two journalists and their driver who were on assignment in Moscow-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region, Russian authorities and media said.

The attack killed Alexander Fedorchak, a war correspondent from Russia's Izvestia media outlet, as well as camera operator Andrei Panov and driver Alexander Sirkeli who worked for the Zvezda television channel, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Another Zvezda correspondent, Nikita Goldin, was seriously wounded.

The attack was "a targeted artillery shelling by Kyiv," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said in a statement on Telegram.

"The strike was carried out by high-precision MLRS munitions on a predetermined civilian vehicle with representatives of the press," Zakharova said without providing evidence.

Reuters could not independently verify the Russian reports. Ukraine's presidential office and the foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters' request to comment outside office hours.

The attacks came at the same time Russian and American negotiators were meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a potential partial ceasefire in the three-year-old war that Russia started with a full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbour.

Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-appointed governor of Luhansk region, said that the Ukrainian shelling killed six people. He did not say who were the other people reportedly killed.

Nearly all of the Luhansk region has been captured now by Russian forces as Moscow drives to take control of the broader eastern Donbas region, one of Ukraine's most industrialised areas.

Luhansk, along with three other Ukrainian regions partly held by Russia, has been annexed and incorporated into Russia, in a move condemned as illegal by Kyiv and its Western allies.

With the Kremlin's tight control of information about its military actions in Ukraine, Russian war correspondents have been key in disseminating news about the war.

Izvestia, a pro-Kremlin news outlet, said Fedorchak had gone into Luhansk region after reporting from the Kupiansk area in neighbouring Kharkiv region, one of the areas where Russian forces have made advances in recent months.

In Luhansk, Izvestia said on its website, Fedorchak was preparing a report on the work of drone crews when their car was hit.

"His last report was released on March 23 - it was a story about how our troops were tightening the semicircle around Kupiansk," Izvestia said.

A freelance reporter working for Izvestia was killed in Ukraine in January.

On Monday, another Russian journalist, a correspondent for the state TASS news agency, was injured in a Ukrainian attack on the Russian border Kursk region, Zakharova said.

Data provided earlier in the war by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Zakharova called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations to respond "appropriately" to the attacks.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Stephen Coates)