Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific (UNESCO), condemned the killing of Sputnik war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev on Monday.
Azoulay also called for a probe into the Ukrainian artillery strike which also left three other journalists severely wounded.
The death of Zhuravlev at the frontlines has also drawn condemnation from Paris-based global watchdog International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which echoed calls for a “thorough investigation” into the matter.
“The Journalists and Media Workers' Union (JMWU, the Russian affiliate of IFJ) calls for a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this tragedy, and for newsrooms to assess the risks of each assignment as rigorously as possible, respecting the well-known rules of clear identification of reporters so that they are not confused with combatants,” Andrei Jvirblis, the Secretary of JMWU, said in a statement on Monday.
The IFJ further urged the parties to the conflict to “provide journalists with the best possible protection to allow them to carry out their duties safely."
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that the attack on the journalists wasn’t an “accident”
“The correspondents were collecting materials for a report on Kiev regime militants shelling communities in the Zaporozhye Region with cluster munitions, which are banned in many countries,” Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said.
She said that the cluster munitions used in the strike had been supplied by the US and other western backers of Kiev.
“Those responsible for the brutal murder of the Russian journalist will inevitably suffer the punishment they deserve. The entire measure of responsibility will be shared by those who supplied cluster munitions to their Kiev protégés,” the MFA spokesperson said.