A Russian TV war correspondent has been killed by a mine while working near the Ukrainian border.

Anna Prokofieva, who worked for Russia’s state-run Channel One, was travelling in a car that hit an “enemy mine” in Russia’s western Belgorod region, her employer said.

She “died while performing her professional duty”, the TV channel wrote in a statement, adding that the blast also wounded her colleague, cameraman Dmitry Volkov.

Ms Prokofieva, 35, joined the channel in 2023 and had frequently reported from inside occupied Ukraine. She had also recently covered Ukraine’s retreat from Suzha, the main settlement captured by Kyiv during its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Her last online post was dated Tuesday and showed her smiling in a forest, wearing military fatigues and a head-mounted camera.

“Somewhere on the border with country 404”, she captioned the photo, in a derogatory reference to the “404 file not found” internet error that pro-Kremlin military bloggers use to refer to Ukraine.

Several Russian journalists have been killed in the three-year conflict, with their deaths highly publicised back home.

Confirming Ms Prokofieva’s death, Maria Zakharova, the Kremlin’s foreign ministry spokesman, accused Ukraine of frequently and deliberately targeting Russian media workers.

“Journalists could die en masse in connection with a natural disaster. Today this natural disaster is called the ‘terrorist Kiev regime’,” Ms Zakharova said.