A French journalist working for the international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) was killed by rocket fire near the embattled city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
Arman Soldin, 32, was AFP’s video coordinator in Ukraine and was killed in a rocket attack on the outskirts of the town of Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, AFP announced on Twitter, citing colleagues who witnessed the incident.
“We are devastated to learn of the death of AFP video journalist Arman Soldin in eastern Ukraine today,” AFP said. “All of our thoughts go out to his family and loved ones.”
Soldin was with four colleagues at the time of the attack, but the other journalists were not injured, the news agency said.
Their reporting team was with Ukrainian soldiers when they came under fire around 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to AFP.
Soldin, a French citizen with Bosnian origins, was an experienced reporter who had regularly traveled to the front lines, the news agency said. He had been AFP’s video coordinator there since September 2022 and covered the conflict from the early days of Russia’s invasion.
“Our journalists travel regularly to this area to report on clashes in the region, the epicenter of fighting in Ukraine for several months,” AFP said in its statement.
Soldin is one of the several known journalists killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, including Fox News photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski and consultant Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, journalist and documentarian Brent Renaud, and photojournalist Maks Levin.
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