An AFP journalist dies in a bombing near Bakhmut
A journalist from the French agency AFP died Tuesday as a result of a bombing near the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut..
The deceased, Arman Soldin, was traveling with four colleagues from the same agency and with a group of Ukrainian soldiers when they were victims of a Grad rocket bombardment in the surroundings of Tchassiv Iar, a town near Bakhmut. It is an area subject to frequent bombing by Russian troops trying to complete the conquest of Bakhmut.
Soldin, 32, a video coordinator in Ukraine, was killed in the attack although his colleagues were unharmed, AFP reported.. “His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists who cover the conflict in Ukraine on a daily basis,” said AFP president Fabrice Fries, who admitted that “the agency as a whole is devastated.”.
We are devastated to learn of the death of AFP video journalist Arman Soldin in eastern Ukraine today.
All of our thoughts go out to his family and loved ones. pic.twitter.com/T2y449o1Ry
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) May 9, 2023
Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF, an organization based in Paris), expressed the “great sadness” of the organization for “a tragedy for all those who defend the independence and reliability of information.”.
The AFP video coordinator killed today near Bakhmut is the tenth journalist killed in #Ukraine since the Russian attack. On April 26, Ukrainian Bohdan Bitik was killed by Russian sniper fire near Kherson. https://t.co/sOH18X5HgE pic.twitter.com/xF52rG3qRJ
— Christophe Deloire (@cdeloire) May 9, 2023
French President Emmanuel Macron highlighted in a Twitter message the “courage” of the dead informer, who was in Ukraine “from the first moment to define the facts. To inform us”.
Agence France-Presse journalist, one of our compatriots, Arman Soldin, was killed in Ukraine. With courage, from the first hours of the conflict he was at the front to establish the facts. To inform us. Nous partageons la douleur de ses proches et de tous ses frères.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 9, 2023
Soldin is the third French journalist to die in the war in Ukraine, after Pierre Zakrzewski, a French-Irish Fox cameraman shot dead on March 14, 2022 near Kiev, and BFM news television cameraman Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, victim of an artillery shell on May 30 last year while covering an evacuation of civilians in Luhansk.