France 2 fixer injured by the Kharkiv hotel strike

At the moment of the January 10 Russian shelling strike on the Park Hotel in Kharkiv, journalists for the TV channel France 2 were present in the building. The channel's Ukrainian fixer Violetta Pedorych was injured, Ukrinform reports.

The journalists were checking into the hotel and were in the hallway at the time of the strike. Although they remained unharmed, one of the members of the group, Violetta Pedorych, was injured: the galss shards cut her face and hand.

Violetta provided Ukrinform with a video she filmed immediately after the attack.

As the IMI reported, journalist Davit Kachkachishvili and photographer Özge Elif Kızıl of the Turkish news agency Anadolu were injured by the Russian shelling strike of the Park Hotel in Kharkiv on January 10. The crew's car was destroyed as well.

The head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, Oleh Synehubov, said that the Russians fired two S-300 missiles at the hotel around 10:30 p.m.

Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Main Office of the National Police in the Kharkiv oblast, said that Russia had shelled the hotel in Kharkiv deliberately and that all the victims were civilians. He noted that the hotel was primarily used by international journalists.

"Soldiers have never stayed in this hotel, almost all of Kharkiv knows that. This hotel was used by journalists. It was a well-known fact. At the time of the attack, foreign journalists, namely from Turkiye, were staying in the hotel. This leads me to believe that the Russian Federation was targeting the mass media specifically," said Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

IMI monitors Russia's crimes against the media and journalists in Ukraine. In the year and ten months since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has committed 548 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine.