Photo: Anna Prokofyeva / Telegram
A correspondent for Russian state TV was killed when she stepped on a mine in the country’s southwestern Belgorod region while covering the Ukrainian military’s continued offensive in the border region, state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.
Anna Prokofyeva, a reporter with Channel One who posted a photo of herself wearing military fatigues on her Telegram channel the day before her death, was killed after stepping on a Ukrainian mine, TASS wrote, which also injured her cameraman Dmitry Volkov, who was taken to hospital.
According to Russian pro-war blogger Vladimir Romanov, Prokofyeva was killed near the border village of Demidovka, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) reportedly entered last week. The AFU’s recent incursion into the Belgorod region began on 18 March, when Ukrainian troops repeatedly shelled villages in the Krasnaya Yaruga district.
On Sunday, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov described the situation in the Krasnaya Yaruga district as “difficult”, and said that the regional authorities had evacuated border village residents as Russian troops were “engaged in combat operations” there.
Ukrainian military expert Ivan Stupak told Novaya Gazeta Europe that the Ukrainian troops engaged in combat in the Belgorod region were likely the same troops that occupied parts of Russia’s Kursk region, to the north of Belgorod, before being forced to withdraw earlier this month.
Stupak said that the objectives of the AFU’s fresh offensive were likely to be preventing a feared Russian advance on Ukraine’s Sumy region, whose capital was struck by a missile on Monday that injured over 100 civilians, as AFU troops came under pressure from Russian forces in the Kursk region.
If the AFU is able to gain a foothold in the Belgorod region, the Russian military would likely struggle to dislodge them, as the area is full of small rivers and hills, Stupak added, noting that Russia would also be forced to redeploy more troops from other areas of the frontline to defend Russian territory, as it originally did in the Kursk region.
