MOSCOW, July 3 (RAPSI) - State Duma members Boris Reznik, Mikhail Markelov (United Russia parliamentary party), Yaroslav Nilov and Vadim Dengin (Liberal Democratic Party) have proposed amendments to the law on mass media in order to increase the safety and security of Russian journalists reporting from warzones, Izvestia reports citing a draft document.

According to the newspaper, the amendments will be heard by the lower house of parliament this Thursday.

The amendments suggest that chief editors and founders of media outlets would be compelled to sign an employment contract with war journalists that would provide for their security and occupational safety. Specifically, journalists will have additional insurance covering disease, injury, repatriation and death.

“The initiative is the result of the events in Ukraine. We decided to protect war journalists and bind employers by an obligation to provide insurance, instructions and individual protection to their employees,” co-author of the bill Yaroslav Nilov said.

Media personnel on assignment in conflict areas will also be subject to genom-record keeping. In case of death when visual identification is impossible, they will be identified by DNA stored in a database.

Last Sunday night, Channel One cameraman Anatoly Klyan was shot dead during an attack on a military unit where the crew was filming, other reporters survived. Earlier, VGTRK news correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and video engineer Anton Voloshin were killed in Ukraine, both during a mortar attack on the villages of Metallist and Mirnoye in the Lugansk Region in eastern Ukraine. Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Lugansk, Vasily Nikitin, claimed that the National Guard was behind the attack.