A British man working for the Reuters news agency has been killed in a strike on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the news agency has said.
Ryan Evans, who was working as a safety adviser for the agency, was killed after a missile struck the Hotel Sapphire on Saturday where he was staying as part of a six-person team.
Two of the agency’s journalists were being treated in hospital; one of them was seriously injured, it said.
“We are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families,” Reuters said.
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Mr Evans (38), a former British soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics.
“We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones. Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly,” Reuters said.
The three other members of the Reuters team who were in the hotel at the time of the strike were accounted for and safe, the agency said.
Ukrainian president,Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the hotel was hit by a Russian Iskander missile, a ballistic missile that can strike at distances up to 500km (310 miles).
“An ordinary city hotel was destroyed by the Russian Iskander,” he said in his evening address yesterday, adding the strike was “absolutely purposeful, thought out . . . my condolences to family and friends.”
Russia has been bombing hotels in frontline areas for more than a year. A double-tap missile strike on the Druzhba hotel in Pokrovsk, also in the Donetsk region, killed seven people last August. Eleven were injured in a bombing of a hotel in Kharkiv in January.
In the Sumy region, four civilians were reported to have been killed and 13 injured, local police said, on a day in which Russian attacks targeted 50 different sites.
The Sumy region borders Russia’s Kursk province, where this month Ukrainian forces launched a surprise cross-border incursion, gaining more than 1,250sq km (480sq miles) of territory.
Fighting is still said to be taking place around Korenevo, 24km inside the Russian border. Progress north and east of Sudzha, the principal settlement taken by Ukraine, has also been limited in the past week.
Last night, however, Mr Zelenskiy said Kyiv’s forces had advanced up to 3km in the Kursk region, taking control of two more settlements there.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to swap 115 prisoners of war on Saturday after Kyiv had seized hundreds during the Kursk incursion.
However, Zelenskiy was criticised by Denys Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov brigade, for not negotiating the return of the estimated 900 fighters from the unit still held by Russia.
“Precious opportunity and time have been lost,” he said. – Guardian