Russian missile attack k ill s AFP journalist in Ukraine

AFP's Ukraine video coordinator Arman Soldin was killed on Tuesday by rocket fire near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, AFP journalists who witnessed the incident said.

The attack happened at around 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) on the outskirts of the town close to Bakhmut, the epicentre of the fighting in eastern Ukraine for several months. The AFP team came under fire by Grad rockets while they were with a group of Ukrainian soldiers.

Soldin, 32, was killed when a rocket struck close to where he was lying. The rest of the team was uninjured. ‘The whole agency is devastated by the loss of Arman,’ AFP chairman Fabrice Fries said. ‘His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine.’

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Soldin on Twitter, hailing his ‘bravery’. ‘With bravery, from the first hours of the conflict he was at the front to establish the facts. To inform us,’ Macron wrote, saying he shared ‘the pain of his relatives and all his colleagues’. Ukraine's defence ministry offered its ‘heartfelt condolences’ to Soldin's family and coworkers in a statement on Twitter, saying he was killed in a Russian missile attack on Chasiv Yar in the eastern region of Donetsk.

‘He dedicated his life to informing the world about the truth. His legacy, as well as his cause, will live on,’ it said. Born in Sarajevo, Soldin was a French national who began working for AFP as an intern in its Rome bureau in 2015 and was later hired in London. He was part of the first AFP team to be sent to Ukraine following the start of Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022, arriving on the following day. Soldin had been living in Ukraine since September, leading the team's video coverage and travelling regularly to the front lines in the east and south.

Soldin's death means at least 11 journalists or fixers and drivers for media teams have been killed covering the war in Ukraine, according to the media advocacy groups Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In Washington, the White House also paid tribute to Soldin, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the world was ‘indebted’ to the journalists who lost their lives covering the conflict.

‘Journalism is fundamental to a free society,’ she said in a statement. ‘Arman's brilliant work encapsulated everything that has made us so proud of AFP's journalism in Ukraine,’ the agency's Global News Director Phil Chetwynd said.

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