May 30, 2022, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, image reporter for BFMTV, is killed in Ukraine. He was with reporter Maxime Brandstaetter, who suffered a leg injury, and their fixer Oksana Leuta, who escaped unscathed. They were on the road to Lyssytchansk in the Donbass, for a report in an armored humanitarian truck intended to help the population surrounded by the Russians.
Maxime Brandstaetter says he remembers every detail of this day of May 30 when he was close to death and lost his colleague. Three months later, he still feels the need to talk about it, to tell about the explosion, about the fixer who grabs him by the collar and pulls him to the ground, the first minutes of amazement when he realizes that Frédéric Leclerc -Imhoff won’t get up. It was the second mission in Ukraine for the cameraman, the third for the young reporter of 28 years.
“Left side of the truck, I pass in front of the cabin, I see all the policemen getting out and I don’t see Fred. Instinctively, I approach the cabin, but the policemen hold me back.”
“I just see his legs which are elongated, I see his pants, I see the shoes he had on and Oxana translates to me: ‘the police tell you that he is not well, but that you have to go get shelter’.”
Maxime Brandstaetterat franceinfo
“We arrive in the middle of the street towards a building of refugees. I turn towards the truck and I still hear shells. I see people running, there is the pilot who is bleeding and I start shouting repeatedly : ‘Fred, Fred’, I yell: ‘Fred’ in the direction of the truck because I have the impression that if I shout, it will end up getting out”, says Maxime Brandstaetter.
The reporter was only slightly injured during the impact: “I had a small chip, a very small gravel in the leg which pierced the vehicle and entered my leg.” This injury, even small, reminds him from time to time, when he talks about that day in particular. “In fact, when she hurts me, it hurts all over the nerve in the back of my calf. I do not really know why. It’s definitely psychosomatic. But otherwise, it’s going very well.” said Maxim Brandstaetter.
The two survivors returned from Donbass together and he convinced her to come to France with him, “because I thought it was important that we meet Frédéric’s parents, that she also testify here. And after that, she returned to Ukraine because before being a fixer, her job was an actress. I I have her on the phone regularly and she overcomes that by being super active and keeping busy all the time.” recount Maxim Brandstaetter.
If physically, Maxime Brandstaetter has almost no sequelae, on the psychological level, it is different. He says today “accept” what this trauma will change in his life. “I think I’m just trying to learn to live with it. I see life differently, I go more to the point. I accept that it’s always there, that I’m going to think about it all my life, that all my life when there will be a loud noise, I will jump, that all my life when a plane will pass above me, I will have a little reflex of terror. But here, I try to understand how to live the best possible with that”, confess Maxim Brandstaetter.
He also confesses to wanting something else, to change his life, his perspective. But this drama has in no way changed his desire to continue to exercise his profession of reporter with the risks that this implies: to go where the news is happening, including in a war zone. “I wanted to go back to work very quickly, the psychologists stopped me at first because I was under stress. So I went back to work in mid-July because I already wanted to, because it gives me a framework. It gets me up in the morning, it gives me a purpose, it makes me do something. My love for this profession, my interest in it, has not changed. When I look what happened there, yes, it’s heavy. I sometimes cry thinking about that, etc., but at no time, even right after, did I regret going there, I I regretted having done what we did there”, entrusts Maxime Brandstaetter.
“We thought it was important to show the world what war was about. I know Fred was exactly on the same wavelength as me. That’s why we were going there. And I know very well that there, today, in my place, he would say once again that it is important and that he does not regret.
Maxime Brandstaetterat franceinfo
Of the investigation by the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office for war crimes in France, he does not know much. He and the fixer were questioned at length by the competent authorities in Ukraine and France about the circumstances of the attack on this humanitarian vehicle. “All I hope from this investigation is that they will be able to determine responsibilities. I know that international investigations, even more so for war crimes, are very long. It can take time without guarantee I know that if at least we manage to determine responsibility, if at least we manage to demonstrate that the Russians fired on a humanitarian truck which was consciously marked humanitarian, that will relieve me enormously”, concludes Maxim Brandstaetter.
Meanwhile, Maxime Brandstaetter, who is a journalist specializing in police and justice, has returned to the field in France. This summer, he covered police attacks in Lyon, arson in Gironde. He knows he will go back to Ukraine, it’s just a matter of time.