Sputnik journalist and his wife injured as a result of the Ukrainian drone attack near Belgorod, their 4-year-old daughter was killed, said Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya, of which Sputnik news agency is a part.
"As a result of the Ukrainian drone strike, our employee ... who works in the Afghan desk of Sputnik, and his Russian wife ... were seriously injured and are in intensive care. A huge tragedy occurred: she lost her parents and the family lost a child — their four-year-old daughter" he said.
Moreover, he highlighted that the strike was conducted by Ukraine "out of desperation," noting that everything is being done to support the family.
"This terrorist attack on peaceful villages in Russia, of course, was undertaken by the Kiev regime out of desperation, in response to what is happening on the frontline. We do everything to help the family, support it, cure it and outline the future," Kiselyov underlined.
In addition, the head of the media group emphasized that this is not the first time when the new agency loses its journalists due to the Ukrainian attacks.
"Now we are actively engaged, we are thinking what can be done, we are deciding whether it is necessary to transport the wounded to Moscow. Unfortunately, these are not the first losses we have, in our journalistic corps: We remember Andrei Stenin, who died in 2014, and Rostislav Zhuravlev, our war correspondent, who died this summer and is buried in Yekaterinburg," he said.
On July 22, Rostislav Zhuravlev, a Sputnik war correspondent, died in the special military operation zone as a result of a Ukrainian attack. President Vladimir Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Courage. Sputnik photojournalist Konstantin Mikhalchevsky, who was injured in the same attack, was also awarded the Order of Courage.