MOSCOW: The Russian media outlet Izvestia said on Saturday that a Ukrainian drone strike killed its reporter near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

`The Ukrainian army launched a drone strike on a civilian car carrying Izvestia`s freelance correspondent Alexander Martemyanov,` the daily reported on its Telegram channel.

`The car was located far from the line of contact.

Izvestia said the car was travelling on a highway linking Donetsk, the Russian-held main town of Donetsk region, and the city of Horlivka to the north.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, writing on her ministry`s website, denounced the incident as `deliberate murder`.

Zakharova described it as `another brutal crime in a series of bloody atrocities` of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy`s government `which openly resorts to terrorist methods to eliminate its ideological opponents`.

Data previously provided by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 15 journalists killed since Russia`s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia`s RIA news agency said two of its correspondents travelling with Martemyanov were injured in the incident, along with two journalists working for a local publication in Donetsk.-Reuters