A veteran journalist working for Russian state media has been killed in an accident on shooting range in Russia-annexed region of Crimea. The following announcement has been made by the state media group.
Russian agencies quoted the media reports as saying, that, “the head of the Kremlin-supported media’s Crimea bureau Svetlana Babayeva has been died in an accident while practising shooting on Friday.”
The 50-year-old had throughout her career with pro-Kremlin media also been posted to the UK as well as the US.
Meanwhile, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya group and of Russia’s main state TV presenters, Dmitry Kiselyov, said that, “Babayeva would be greatly missed.”
Furthermore, he said she was the “warmest person, strongly rooting for Moscow as well as that she had wanted to support our heroes.”
At the same time, the Kremlin has also expressed sorrow at her loss, stating it was “hard to believe” she had died & that we would be “greatly missed.”
Moreover, spokesman Dmitry Peskov called her a “multi-talented journalist” & an “unusually charming woman.”
He has expressed praise for Babayeva, who was also part of a presidential pool of journalists along with whom he stated that the Kremlin had worked “for many years.”
She began working at Rossiya Segodnya after a controversial state overhaul of the media, and had been its representative in the Crimean city of Simferopol since 2019.
Russian authorities in occupied southern Ukraine also mourned her loss, with a Moscow-installed official in the city of Kherson praising her reporting of “true information” from the occupied territories.