In Donetska oblast, operator of Russian "First Channel" died

On the eve of June 30, in Donetska oblast the operator of the Russian «First Channel» Anatoliy Klian. According to the channel's website, Klian was on a location near to one of the Ukrainian military bases, where he went as a part of the filming crew to film a news story. The military started to shoot at them. Anatoliy Klian was fatally wounded in the stomach. He was 68 years old, of them 40 he has worked in the «First Channel» news team. The filming crew also included a correpondent and a sound engineer. The trip was organized by the press service of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People's Republic,” DPR gunmen, who promised the crew safe passage and great story. According to DPR press service, mothers of soldiers were planning to come there and to take their sons home. The «First Channel» has been filming such stories already for several days.

Klian's last filmed footage was an interview of one of these mothers. Another operator's footage shows how Klian's filming crew was leaving the dangerous area. Their bus stopped in about 5 hundred meters and stopped, they went out. A signal flare appeared up in the sky, and the shooting began. Klian was filming when he got hit by a bullet.

Members of other filming crews, from the TV channels LifeNews and Ren-TV were not injured. The Russian police opened an investigation of Klian's death. The “First Channel” accuses the Ukrainian authorities of killing him and other journalists to keep a lid on the way they are fighting the rebels. Ukrainian police is also investigating this incident.

On June 17, in Luhanska oblast the VGTRK correpondent Ihor Korneliuk succumbed to the wounds he sustained while filming a story about the rebels. The Anti-Terrorist Operation press center states that he was not accredited with them and was working in the area under the separatists' control with no protection gear.