We’ll keep news staff safe, BBC insists, as team remains in Kyiv

THE BBC last night insisted the safety of its journalists was its ‘top priority’ as its reporting team remains in the besieged Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Presenter Clive Myrie and chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet have kept millions gripped with their harrowing dispatches from the frontline in Kyiv.

The danger they face was brought into sharp focus last week when a Sky News journalist was shot in the back as his crew came under attack from a Russian ‘death squad’.

Last night a spokesman for the BBC said: ‘The safety of our teams working and reporting from Ukraine is our top priority and we have a range of measures in place to support staff as well as highly skilled teams working to assess and mitigate any risks.’

Sky News presenter Mark Austin revealed last week that he and his team had fled Kyiv for a ‘more secure location in Ukraine’ but Myrie explained why he and other journalists are remaining in Kyiv. ‘We all feel that we want to tell the story of this war and tell it accurately and fairly,’ he said.

Boris Johnson yesterday praised the ‘astonishing courage’ of Sky News journalists ambushed in a hail of bullets while reporting in Ukraine.

Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay was hit by a bullet in his lower back after their car came under fire on Monday.

Footage of the incident shows the five journalists ducking for cover as bullets whizz past. Footage shows them desperately shouting to their attackers that they are journalists in the mistaken belief it was a Ukrainian army checkpoint firing on them. But they were later told that they had been ambushed by a ‘saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad’.

Two bullets also hit camera operator Richie Mockler in his body armour before the group managed to escape.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister tweeted: ‘The courage of these journalists, putting themselves in terrifying and dangerous situations, is astonishing to watch. They’re risking their lives to ensure that the truth is told.’

The Sky News crew is now back in the UK while a local producer who was with them, Andrii Lytvynenko, is back with his family in Ukraine.