Agence France-Presse’s video coordinator in Ukraine, Arman Soldin, was killed on Tuesday afternoon in a Russian rocket attack in eastern Ukraine, near the besieged town of Bakhmout.
In the evening, Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to him. “An 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, ”wrote the French president on Twitter.
Shortly after, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense presented its “sincere condolences to his family and colleagues”, adding, on the same social network: “He dedicated his life to reporting the truth to the world”.
Arman Soldin was part of a team of five AFP reporters who accompanied Ukrainian soldiers on the most active front of the war, around Chassiv Iar, a Ukrainian town near Bakhmout and targeted daily by Russian forces.
The salvo of Grad rockets that hit her were fired around 4:30 p.m. local time. He was hit as he lay on the ground trying to protect himself. The rest of the team escaped unscathed.
“The Agency as a whole has collapsed,” said Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFP. “His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers that journalists face on a daily basis when covering the conflict in Ukraine.”
Phil Chetwynd, AFP news director, hailed the memory of a “brave, creative and tenacious” journalist. “Arman’s brilliant work summed up everything that makes us proud of AFP journalism in Ukraine,” he added.
An experienced image reporter previously stationed in London, Arman Soldin had been the video coordinator in Ukraine since September 2022 and traveled regularly to the front lines.
He was also part of the AFP team that covered the very first days of the Russian invasion.
“Arman was enthusiastic, energetic, courageous. He was a real field reporter, always ready to go, even to the most difficult areas,” said AFP Europe director Christine Buhagiar.
Evacuated from Sarajevo at one year
In the French National Assembly, deputies from all groups stood up on Tuesday evening to applaud in tribute to the journalist.
Recruited in Rome in 2015 as an intern before joining the London office the same year, Arman, of French nationality and of Bosnian origin, was born in Sarajevo. He was one of the first evacuees in France in 1992 at the start of the siege of the city. He was barely a year old.
“Refugee stories touch me,” he said last year for the blog Making Of from AFP, interviewed from kyiv as he was lit by candlelight.
He was fluent in French, English and Italian, but his origins helped him in his work in Ukraine: “I gibberish a bit in Bosnian, it’s also a Slavic language, we understand each other a little […]. Many women are called Oksana, my mother too. »
A gifted footballer, he had played as a youngster at Stade Rennais in western France but had given up hope of a professional career.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, Arman volunteered to be among the Agency’s first special envoys.
“A year almost to the day since my arrival in Ukraine for the first time which changed my life”, he wrote in February, saying to himself “very proud and moved by the work, the efforts and the tears that we have devoted to it with my colleagues “. “It’s not over,” he added.
He is at least the eleventh reporter, fixer or driver of journalists to have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, according to a count by specialized NGOs RSF and CPJ.