Russian drone injures Ukrainian journalist Olha Kalinovska near front line

New York, June 5, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a recent Russian attack in Ukraine that injured Olha Kalinovska, a war correspondent with the privately owned Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 5.

“The Russian attack that injured Ukrainian journalist Olha Kalinovska once again highlights the considerable risks journalists face while covering Russia’s war in Ukraine amid the widespread use of drones,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Journalists are civilians under international humanitarian law and must be able to report safely on the war.”

On June 3, Kalinovska was reporting on civilians living in the village of Pokrovske, in the Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine — less than nine miles from the front line — when a Russian fiber-optic drone hit the military car she and two members of the Ukrainian military were in. Fiber-optic drones are not piloted via GPS signals or radio control, and are immune to electronic jamming. 

“The drone … was flying right at us,” Kalinovska told the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local advocacy and trade group. “It was 50 meters [164 feet] away. The driver maneuvered, managed to turn the car around. We quickly opened the door and literally fell onto the asphalt. And at that moment, when we were falling out, there was an explosion.” 

Kalivoska suffered a concussion and her hearing was temporarily damaged due to the blast, she told the union. 

“Luckily, the drone flew into the net stretched in front of the [car’s] windshield, and not into us,” she wrote on Facebook.

Kalinovska was wearing “press” markings but told CPJ that the drone probably did not see them. 

In September 2025, Kalinovska suffered a concussion after a car transporting ran into a mine near the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region. 

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. 

In over four years of war, Russia has often hit the offices of media outlets across the country. Journalists have been injured and their homes have been shelled. In recent incidents, Oksana Rudyk, an editor with the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne, was wounded during a drone attack on the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk on May 13, and on May 29, Olena Kompanets, editor-in-chief of local newspaper Promin, suffered a concussion after a Russian strike hit the newsroom in the northern city of Snovsk, in the Chernihiv region. 

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