Russian drone destroys foreign journalists' car in Sloviansk
A Russian FPV drone destroyed a car used by foreign journalists in the Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Thursday — the team had just entered a store minutes before the strike and were unharmed.
On Thursday, September 24, a Russian FPV drone struck and destroyed a car used by a group of foreign journalists in the Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. The journalists had entered a nearby store shortly before the strike and were physically unharmed, but the vehicle and the work equipment left inside it were completely destroyed.
The team included Swedish journalist and writer Mustafa Can and Spanish photojournalist Diego Herrera Carcedo. Volodymyr Kurinnyi, a Ukrainian producer who works with foreign media, posted photos of the burned-out car on Facebook, saying the journalists were inside a nearby building at the moment of impact and were therefore unharmed, though their cameras, laptops and protective equipment burned.
How events unfolded
Serhii Tomilenko, head of Ukraine's National Union of Journalists, said the drone hit the car shortly after the team had stepped out and entered a supermarket. By the time the journalists ran back outside, the car was already on fire. The strike hit the passenger side, where Can usually sat.
According to Can's account as cited by Tomilenko, gunfire heard inside the store was initially not seen as alarming, since shooting is heard there constantly. But then an explosion shook the entire supermarket. The journalists believe the strike may have involved a fiber-optic-cable-guided FPV drone, though this has not been independently confirmed.
Ukraine's State Emergency Service confirmed that on September 24 an FPV drone struck a civilian car in Sloviansk, setting it on fire. Rescuers extinguished the blaze, and there were no casualties.
