Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin expressed gratitude to the military correspondents of the Rossiya Segodnya media group for their bravery in covering the special military operation at the ceremony of the Russian Government Media Awards for 2023.
"Before we move on to the ceremony, I want to say some words about our awardees. I’ll start with war correspondents. They risk themselves, fulfilling their professional duty, creating a clear picture of events from Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, from the Kherson region, from the border regions of Russia. Among them are employees of news agency Rossiya Segodnya, which report on the situation in the new territories," Mishustin said.
The minister noted Alexander Kharchenko, Sergey Shilov, Viktor Antonyuk and Konstantin Mikhalchevsky among Rossiya Segodnya's war correspondents.
RT journalists also received awards: the chief producer of the Russian edition of the TV channel, Anna Abakumova, was honored for the implementation of the charity project "We will continue to act." The award was also given to presenter Anna Knishenko, RT's military correspondent Igor Zhdanov, director Klim Poplavsky, head of the investigation department Alexander Raskin and producer Lidiya Mizieva.
Mishustin added that Zvezda TV channel correspondents Pavel Kutarenko, Roman Zakurdaev and Victoria Kosoglyadenko were also among the award winners.
"I want to thank them for their courage, for their steadfastness in covering a special military operation," the prime minister emphasized.
The military correspondents also thanked Mishustin for his high assessment of their work.
"Thank you very much for noting our work, we won’t say much, we will do better. We will return to the zone of special military operation, or to other hot spots, and continue to do our job," Alexander Kharchenko thanked the Prime Minister after being awarded the government prize.
Some Russian war journalists died in the line of duty. Thus, Sputnik's correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev was killed by a Ukrainian cluster bomb attack in the Zaporozhye Region in late July, and Rossiya 24 TV channel correspondent Boris Maksudov was injured in a Ukrainian targeted drone attack on journalists in the Zaporozhye Region on November 22 and died of his wounds on the following day.