Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the United States is “looking very hard at the targeting that the Russian forces are doing,” including whether it is deliberately going after civilians and journalists.
During an interview with NPR, Blinken noted the U.S. is seeing journalists “in the crossfire, people doing their jobs to bring the truth to the world.”
He added, “We’ve seen a Fox team that was — had two of its members killed, one injured, someone I know very well. This is Ben Hall. He’s someone who travels with me when I travel around the world, someone I have great affection for, who’s a tremendous reporter who asks me a lot of tough questions every place we go.”
Blinken told the outlet he is “very much hoping and praying that he’ll be back on the job as soon as possible, but meanwhile two of his colleagues lost their lives in this attack, and another very prominent filmmaker lost his life just the other day.”
Watch his comments below:
NPR’s Steve Inskeep went on to ask Blinken, “Do you have any reasons to think that Russian troops are targeting journalists.”
He responded, “We are looking very hard at the targeting that the Russian forces are doing, including whether they are deliberately, intentionally targeting civilians, journalists, anyone else. This is something we’re looking hard at, we’re documenting.”
Blinken added, “Others are looking at this. The deliberate targeting of civilians, journalists, and others would constitute a war crime. So it’s something that we’re very focused on.”
His comments come just one day after Fox News announced one of the network’s cameraman, Pierre Zakrzewski, was killed while working in Ukraine, as IJR reported.
Fox News also reported earlier this week one of the network’s reporters, Benjamin Hall, was injured outside of Kyiv.
