MOSCOW (AFP) - A Russian military chaplain was killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack in the southwest near the Ukraine border, the Russian Orthodox Church said on Friday (March 25).

Oleg Artyomov was serving in the village of Zhuravlyovka in Russia's Belgorod region on Thursday when he "came under shelling from a Ukrainian Smerch (rocket launcher) and died", the Moscow Patriarchate's military department said on social media.

This is the first publicly reported death on Russian soil from Ukrainian shelling since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine on Feb 24.

Artyomov, a Cossack, was an assistant commander for serving believers in a military unit at the time of his death, the church said.

Zhuravlyovka is located about two kilometres from the Ukrainian frontier, bordering the Kharkiv region in the northeast.

Born in 1957, Artyomov was a naval officer who had previously served as chaplain on submarines and a Russian research ship, the church said.