Russian drone attack kills 2 Ukrainian journalists

New York, October 23, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for a thorough investigation into the killing of Ukrainian journalists Olena Hramova, 43, and Yevhen Karmazin, 33, in a Russian drone attack on October 23, 2025. 

“CPJ is deeply saddened and outraged by the killing of Ukrainian journalists Olena Hramova and Yevhen Karmazin in a Russian drone strike,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Their death is a tragic reminder of the risks that journalists face every day to tell the world about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Journalists are civilians under international humanitarian law and should be protected as such.” 

A car transporting a TV crew of Ukraine’s state-funded international broadcaster Freedom was hit by a Lancet, a long-range drone often used against tanks and armored vehicles, as the journalists were reporting on the aftermath of October 22’s Russian drone strike on a gas station in Kramatorsk, in the eastern region of Donetsk, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Donbas-focused project Donbas.Realii.

The drone killed Freedom correspondent Hramova, also known as Hubanova, and camera operator Karmazin, according to Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin. Freedom TV special correspondent Oleksandr Kolychiev was injured in the attack, Freedom TV reported. He suffered shrapnel wounds and an open fracture, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office.

Hramova and Karmazin had worked for Ukraine’s international state TV channels as a war correspondent and cameraman, respectively, since 2021, Freedom said. 

“From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, they covered the situation in the region, telling the truth about enemy crimes, the evacuation of civilians, and the stories of our defenders,” Filashkin wrote on Facebook. “They worked in the hottest spots of Donbas, and were always the first everywhere.”

“These are not accidents or mistakes, but a deliberate Russian strategy to silence all independent voices reporting about Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.

Ukraine’s national police said they are documenting the attack. The prosecutor general’s office announced the launch of an investigation under Part 2, Article 438 of the Ukrainian criminal code, which pertains to the “violation of the laws and customs of war.”

This strike brings to 21 the total number of journalists and media workers killed while reporting since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. French photojournalist Antoni Lallican was killed by a Russian drone on October 3, 2025.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.