Rescue workers in the rubble of Kramatorsk’s Hotel Sapphire, 25 August 2024. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine’s Donetsk region
A safety adviser working for the Reuters news agency was confirmed to have been killed in a Russian missile strike on a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Sunday evening.
Ryan Evans, a British citizen, was named by the agency in statement following the missile strike on a hotel in eastern Ukraine late on Saturday night. “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.
A 38-year-old former British soldier, Evans began working with Reuters in 2022 and was responsible to advising the agency’s journalists on safety issues during deployment to war zones.
A six-person Reuters crew was staying at the two-storey Hotel Sapphire in the city, which is located in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, when a Russian Iskander missile struck the building, reducing much of it to rubble, Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service reported on Sunday morning.
Four journalists, two of whom worked for Reuters, were hospitalised with serious injuries, while efforts to reach Evans lasted for 19 hours, and had to be interrupted several times due to renewed Russian shelling of the city, according to Radio Liberty.
“Today in Kramatorsk, the entire day was spent clearing the rubble after a Russian missile strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation on Sunday evening, adding that those injured were US, UK and Ukrainian citizens who were “deliberately” targeted in an attack that he described as “calculated”.
“Seven people were injured, and one person lost their life. My deepest condolences to the families and loved ones,” Zelensky said, adding that “the world must not stop exerting pressure on the terrorist state,” and that “Russia must be forced to seek peace.”
Russian missile strikes elsewhere in frontline regions of Ukraine killed four people and injured another 37, Reuters reported on Sunday evening.
