NTV camera operator Valery Kozhin was mortally wounded during the shelling of the Russian city of Gorlovka
One of the members of the NTV crew wounded in the Ukrainian attack on Gorlovka, in the Donetsk People’s Republic, has died of his injuries.
Photographer Valery Kozhin was working with journalist Aleksey Ivliev on Thursday when a mortar mine exploded on top of them. A Russian military officer accompanying the crew was also wounded.
Kozhin succumbed to his wounds on Thursday evening, the mayor of Gorlovka, Ivan Prikhodko, announced on Telegram.
“The doctors tried to save him for several hours, but Valery’s wounds were too severe,” NTV said in a statement.
Kozhin was 46. He began working at NTV in 2006, first as a sound engineer and technician, then as a television photographer. He has repeatedly worked in war zones in Syria, Donetsk and Lugansk.
Ivliev survived the surgery and is reportedly in stable condition, NTV has said.
According to DPR head Denis Pushilin, the crew came under Ukrainian attack in the village of Golmovsky, near Gorlovka. Both Ivliev and Kozhin were struck by shrapnel from an exploding mortar mine. According to some reports, the projectile was dropped from a Ukrainian drone.
Gorlovka is located roughly 30 kilometers north of Donetsk, the Russian federal subject’s capital. The city has not been under Kiev’s control since 2014, when two regions of eastern Ukraine opposed the government that assumed power in the wake of a Western-backed coup. The country’s new authorities tried and failed to crush the uprising using military force.
Russia incorporated the Donetsk People’s Republic as a new federal subjects along with three other erstwhile Ukrainian regions after a referendum in September 2022. Moscow had cited Kiev’s refusal to reconcile with the separatists, and continued attacks against Donetsk and other communities as key reasons for the escalation of the conflict.
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