PARIS — French worldwide information company Agence France-Presse says its Ukraine video coordinator was killed Tuesday throughout a rocket assault close to the jap Ukrainian metropolis of Bakhmut.
Arman Soldin, 32, was with a staff of AFP journalists touring with Ukrainian troopers when the group got here beneath fireplace with Grad rockets, the company mentioned. The remainder of the AFP staff was unhurt.
The late afternoon assault occurred within the neighborhood of Chasiv Yar, a city close to Bakhmut, the company mentioned. Russian forces have been making an attempt to seize town for 9 months, making Bakhmut the main target of the struggle’s longest battle.
“His dying is a horrible reminder of the dangers and risks confronted by journalists daily overlaying the battle in Ukraine,” mentioned AFP chairman Fabrice Fries.
Soldin was born in Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia, and a French citizen, based on AFP. He arrived in Ukraine to cowl the struggle the day after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, and had traveled frequently to the entrance strains in latest months.
AFP mentioned it was “devastated” at Soldin’s dying and “all of our ideas exit to his household and family members.”
In Might 2022, French journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff, who was working in Ukraine for BFM-TV, was killed close to Severodonetsk within the east.
A minimum of 10 media employees have been killed whereas overlaying the struggle in Ukraine, based on Reporters With out Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Shield Journalists.
RSF Director Christophe Deloire praised the every day braveness of these overlaying the struggle and referred to as Soldin’s dying “a tragedy of all those that defend the independence and reliability of data.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a speech Tuesday night time in Washington, expressed condolences to Soldin’s household and family members.
“Numerous journalists are working to reveal and report on the reality in extraordinarily harmful settings,” Blinken mentioned. “At present, we have been devastated to be taught of the dying of AFP video journalist Arman Soldin in jap Ukraine.”