A journalist from Tayside has been injured while reporting on the conflict in war-torn Ukraine.
Former Perth High School pupil Graham Phillips, who was born in Dundee, was taken to hospital in Donetsk after being struck by a fragment from a mine thrown at pro-independence fighters he was covering.
His back injuries were described as “light” by a surgeon at the hospital where he has been treated. He was able to send a message to family and friends via Facebook on Wednesday night, however, telling them of his determination to get back out among the fighting.
The group came under attack from Ukrainian troops in the village of Peski near Donetsk on Monday, where he had been filming shortly before. In his last online report the sound of heavy gunfire could be heard close by.
Last night, he posted from hospital: “I really want to get back to reporting the story, not being the story. This wasn’t personal, this wasn’t an attack against journalists, it wasn’t an attack against me in particular. It’s war, this is a risk of frontline reporting in war.”
Phillips, who lived in Broughty Ferry and attended Eastern Primary School, previously went missing while reporting on the increasingly violent civil war in Ukraine.
He was working for Russia’s Zvezda television channel and contributed reports to the RT television channel and has been detained twice by the Ukrainian State Security Service while working in the conflict zone.
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