Ukrainian drone attack on Kursk injures Chinese reporter, Russia says

(Reuters) -A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Kursk region on the border with Ukraine injured a war correspondent from the Chinese news outlet Phoenix TV, Russian authorities said late on Thursday, urging the United Nations to respond to the incident.

"A Ukrainian drone today struck the village of Korenevo in the Korenevsky district," acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said on the Telegram messaging app. "A 63-year-old correspondent, Lu Yuguang, who went to the border area on his own, was injured."

Khinshtein said in a later post that the journalist had skin cuts to his head and after treatment, refused hospitalisation.

Russia's foreign ministry called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other international organisations to "promptly respond and give a proper assessment" of the incident.

"The targeted attack .... indicates the intention of the Kyiv regime to silence and de facto destroy representatives of any media that seek to convey objective information," Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry's spokeswoman, said in a Telegram post.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate response from Ukraine's foreign ministry and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office to Reuters' request for comment outside business hours.

Phoenix TV reported the incident but has not issued a separate statement.

According to Russia's state and official media outlets, Lu has been reporting on the war since its early days. Russia launched the war with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.

Lu told Russia's state news agencies that he was feeling fine.

"Western journalists are not visible at all (in Kursk)," Lu said in a video posted by TASS on social media, with his head in bandages, "We, Chinese journalists, want to convey what happened in the Kursk region."

Russia and Ukraine have launched numerous cross-border attacks since the start of the war. Parts of Kursk were seized and occupied by Ukrainian forces in a surprise offensive in August 2024 before they were driven out earlier this year.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Warsaw; Additional reporting by the Beijing bureau; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Kate Mayberry)