Vladimir Zhitarenko
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Colonel Vladimir Zhitarenko was a military correspondent for the Russian armed forces daily Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). He had covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Tajikistan and the Transdnester, as well as the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.
On December 31, 1994, Zhitarenko was hit by two sniper bullets as he stepped out of an armored personnel carrier on a front line outside the town of Tolstoy-Yurt, near the Chechen capital of Grozny. He died the next day.
He was the second journalist to die covering the First Chechen War. Cynthia Elbaum, 28, an American photographer, was killed during an air raid on Grozny on December 22. [1]
