French photojournalist Antoni Lallican was killed in a Russian drone attack on October 3, 2025, while he was reporting for French photo agency Hans Lucas near the eastern city of Druzhkivka, in the Donetsk region, according to the 4th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade, a unit of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, and Sergiy Tomilenko, the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), a local advocacy and trade group.
Ukrainian photojournalist Heorhii Ivanchenko, who was working with Lallican, was injured in the attack, the reports said. On October 4, Ukrainian photographer Olga Kovalova reported that Ivanchenko’s leg had been amputated.
Tomilenko told CPJ that the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and military press offices in the Donetsk region had both confirmed Lallican’s killing.
The brigade said that Lallican had been killed by a “targeted strike” from a first-person-view (FPV) drone, which Ivanchenko confirmed on Facebook on October 8. FPV drones allow operators to see their target before striking. Both journalists were wearing personal protective equipment and press markings, the brigade said.
“The explosion tore off armor and clothes and tore off their legs. The only thing I managed to do was to take the cameras,” journalist and NUJU member Oleksandr Kachura, who was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the attack, reported, adding that Lallican’s body was recovered from the field under constant drone attacks, and that his passport, notebook, and fragments of the Russian drone were found later.
“Currently, the main threat to journalists, as well as to all civilians, is Russian drones hunting people,” Tomilenko said. “This is a deliberate hunt for those who are trying to document the aggressor’s crimes.”
On October 3, the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office announced the launch of an investigation under Part 2 of Article 438 of the Ukrainian criminal code, which pertains to the “violation of the laws and customs of war.”
On October 5, the French antiterrorist prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into alleged war-crimes related to Lallican’s killing.
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his condolences on X.
Lallican, 38, had worked with several French and international news outlets, including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, and Die Welt. He had been covering the war in Ukraine since March 2022.
CPJ emailed the Russian defense ministry for comment on the killing of Lallican as a targeted murder of a journalist but did receive a response.