Russian bomb injures journalist in eastern Ukraine 

New York, February 10, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for a thorough investigation into a recent Russian attack in Ukraine that wounded Igor Levinok, a war correspondent with the privately owned Ukrainian TV channel Inter. 

On the morning of February 8, a Russian aerial bomb exploded near the entrance to the building where the Inter TV crew was staying in Kramatorsk, in the eastern region of Donetsk. Shards from a window injured Levinok, a journalist with “Podrobitsy,” Inter’s information and analytical program, in his left arm and left hand. The rest of the TV crew escaped unharmed. The attack killed one person and injured six more, including Levinok. 

Kramatorsk has been used since 2014 as a base for Ukrainian journalists who cover the war and travel to the front line in the east of Ukraine. 

“Nearly four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian attack on a residential building in Kramatorsk that injured Ukrainian journalist Igor Levinok is yet another example of the tremendous risks faced by journalists reporting on the war,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russia should stop targeting civilian infrastructure immediately.”

Separately, on February 9, a Russian drone attacked reporter Odita Krenberga and camera operator Aigars Kovaļevskis, two journalists with Latvian Public Media (LSM), a public broadcaster, while they were reporting in the Donetsk region. They were not injured.  

Earlier, on February 2, in the Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine, a three-person TV crew with the local branch of Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne, which included reporter Anton Sirenko as well as an unnamed camera operator and a driver, came under a Russian drone attack. They all escaped unharmed. 

At least 21 journalists and media workers have been killed while working in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Russia has often hit the offices of media outlets across the country in the nearly four years of war. Journalists have been injured and their homes have been shelled. 

The Russian defense ministry did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.