Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, was on his second assignment in Ukraine and had worked for BFMTV for six years. He has been killed while he was on board a humanitarian bus.
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French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, working for the BFMTV channel, was killed on Monday May 30 in Ukraine, in the east of the country, while he was on board a humanitarian bus alongside civilians. “He would have been hit by shrapnel at the level of the blow, an injury which proved fatal”confirms on franceinfo Jeanne Cavelier, head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia office for Reporters Without Borders. “Journalists are deliberately targeted by the Russian army and it is indeed appalling”she complains.
RSF stresses that this is the second French journalist killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion (Pierre Zakrzewski, Franco-Irish, was killed in March 2022, a few weeks after the start of the conflict), “the first of a large French editorial staff, and it is, let us remember, the eighth journalist killed since the beginning of this conflict which has lasted for three months already”. “We are monitoring the situation day by day and we have around fifty events like this, abuses against journalists by the Russian army”she regrets. Jeanne Cavelier also specifies the importance of the presence of reporters in Ukraine.
“There is an information war. We must have verified information, sourced by professional journalists.”
Jeanne Cavelierat franceinfo
After these attacks against journalists, Jeanne Cavelier told franceinfo that Reporters Without Borders filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court and with the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, “so that the Russian army and its leaders can answer for their crime”, she concludes.