A French journalist working for Agence France-Presse news agency has been killed in Ukraine in a Russian rocket strike near the battle-torn eastern city of Bakhmut, reports The Guardian.
Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video coordinator, died on Monday when a Grad missile landed close to where he was lying. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Chasiv Yar, six miles (10km) from Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.
His colleagues were with him when the attack happened. The rest of the team was uninjured. “The whole agency is devastated by the loss of Arman,” the AFP chair Fabrice Fries said. “His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine.”
At least 11 journalists, fixers and drivers for media organisations have been killed covering the war in Ukraine, according to the group Reporters Without Borders. Last week a Ukrainian fixer, Bogdan Bitik, was shot dead in the southern city of Kherson and the Italian correspondent Corrado Zunino injured.
Russian snipers opened fire on the pair after spotting them next to the Antonivskyi Bridge between the Ukrainian-controlled and Russian-occupied banks of the Dnipro River.
Friends paid tribute to Soldin, describing him as a “fantastic reporter”.
“Terrible news. You can really say that Arman risked his life to tell the story,” the Guardian’s former Kyiv correspondent Isobel Koshiw tweeted.
She added: “He seemed to be almost constantly on the frontlines and was one of the very few in the east throughout the last several months.”