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14 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 16 MARCH 2022 NEWS UKRAINE CONFLICT Nearly three million have fled fighting in Ukraine, UN says SOME three million people have fled Ukraine since Russian forces invaded almost three weeks ago, the UN's In- ternational Organization for Migration (IOM) said on March 15. Russia denies targeting civilians, alleg- ing its actions are a "special military op- eration" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies have called this a baseless pretext for Moscow's in- vasion of a democratic country. More than 150,000 third-country na- tionals are among the refugees, IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli wrote on Twitter. According to government data col- lated by the UN Refugee Agency (UN- HCR), most Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country have arrived in Poland. The Polish border force reported on March 15 that 1.83 million Ukrainian refugees had arrived since the war be- gan. Some 453,432 have been counted in Romania, 337,215 in Moldova, 263,888 in Hungary, and 213,000 in Slovakia, ac- cording to the UNHCR website. Some 142,994 refugees had fled to Rus- sia, UNHCR said, citing the latest data from Moscow, while a relatively small number have fled to Belarus. A significant number of refugees are starting to move further west, with 300,000 individuals to date having gone to Western Europe, the UNHCR said. Refugees from Ukraine arrive at the train station in Przemysl, eastern Poland, earlier this month FOX News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was killed in Ukraine on Monday when his vehicle came under fire, the US network said. A veteran war cameraman, Zakrzewski had been reporting in Ukraine since February. He was traveling in the same vehicle as Fox News correspondent Ben- jamin Hall, who was also injured in the attack, which occurred in the town of Horenka, with Hall remaining in the hospital in the country. In a memo to staff on Tuesday, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott an- nounced the news about Zakrze- wski, calling it "a heartbreaking day" for the network. "Pierre (Zakrzewski) was a war zone photographer who covered nearly every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Af- ghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us," Scott wrote. "His talents were vast and there wasn't a role that he didn't jump in to help with in the field — from photographer to engineer to edi- tor to producer — and he did it all under immense pressure with tremendous skill." Based in London, Zakrzewski assisted last year in Fox News' efforts to extract its staff from Af- ghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country. Zakrzewski was "profoundly committed to telling the story and his bravery, professionalism and work ethic were renowned among journalists at every media outlet," Scott wrote. In Scott's memo, Fox News President Jay Wallace called Zakrzewski "a constant in all of our international coverage. "I, like countless others, always felt an extra sense of reassurance when arriving on the scene and seeing him with camera in hand," Wallace wrote. "The legacy of his positive spirit, boundless energy and eye for the story will carry on." Trey Yingst, a Fox News foreign correspondent reporting from Ukraine, posted a photograph on Twitter of himself and Zakrze- wski. Second American journalist to be killed in Ukraine in two days On Sunday, American filmmak- er and journalist Brent Renaud was shot and killed while report- ing in a suburb of Kyiv. Renaud was killed in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv that has come un- der intense bombing by Russian forces recently. Local police in Kyiv say that Russian troops opened fire on the journalist's car as he tried to film refugees escaping the country. A Peabody award-winning film- maker and journalist, Renaud had previously worked for news organizations such as NBC and HBO. Police posted images of Re- naud's press badge on social me- dia, which stated that he was affil- iated with The New York Times, fueling speculation that he was on assignment with the paper in Ukraine at the time he was killed. The Times later announced that he was not reporting for the pa- per when he was hit. Impacts from a Russian rocket shot over Kyiv near a house in Kurenivka, Ukraine Two US journalists killed in Ukraine