Agence France-Presse’s video coordinator in Ukraine, Arman Soldin, was killed Tuesday, May 9, in a Russian rocket attack in eastern Ukraine, near the besieged city of Bakhmout. The 32-year-old was part of a team of five AFP reporters who accompanied Ukrainian soldiers on the most active front of the war, targeted daily by Russian forces. The salvo of Grad rockets hit him as he was lying on the ground trying to protect himself. The rest of the team was untouched by the shots.
French of Bosnian origin, born in Sarajevo, the journalist has endeavored since the first days of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, to tell a war that resonated with his personal story. Aged just one year, he was one of the first people evacuated from Bosnia at war for France in 1992. “Refugee stories touch me”he said, in 2022, for the AFP “Making-of” blog.
Applauded in the National Assembly
He intended to relate for as many people as possible what he had described as “a somewhat old-fashioned war, in the middle of Europe”. In February, after a year of reporting from the field, he said to himself “very proud and moved by the work, efforts and tears that[’ils] there is[aient] consecrated with [s]are colleagues ». ” It is not finished “, he added. He entered Rome as an intern at AFP in 2015, then worked in London, before returning to Italy in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the evening, Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to him. “With courage, from the first hours of the conflict, he was at the front to establish the facts. To inform us », tweeted the French president. At the French National Assembly, the deputies of all the groups stood up on Tuesday evening and applauded, in tribute to the journalist. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense presented its “sincere condolences to his family and colleagues”. “The world owes Arman”also reacted on Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, spokesperson for the White House. “Journalism is one of the foundations of a free society”, she noted. Arman Soldin is the eleventh reporter, fixer or driver of journalists to have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion, according to a count by the specialized NGOs Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect Journalists.