Bearing witness to the Battle of Bakhmout and the lives of populations condemned to survival: the recent work of Arman Soldin gives an idea of his commitment to covering this conflict. With tenacity, curiosity but also contagious good humor, the AFP video coordinator in Ukraine, killed at the age of 32 in a rocket strike in eastern Ukraine, has endeavored since the first days to tell this war which resonated with his personal story, he who had fled his native Bosnia for France when he was a year old.
He worked to film the fighting in Bakhmout
In Bakhmout, a Ukrainian city that Russian forces have been attacking since last August, he worked despite the violence of the fighting to film the military battle and the destruction caused. It also chronicled the lives of ordinary people caught up in war and trying to survive in the chaos. Like this woman tending to her garden in Tchassiv Yar, a locality near Bakhmout where he died, or the bread delivery man on a scooter on the roads of Donbass.
Journalist Arman Soldin was 32 years old.
Credits: ARMAN SOLDIN / AFP
In kyiv, he had seized a moment of tenderness during an online video game game between a father enlisted in the army and his refugee son abroad. His images often went around the world. And even after a long day of reporting to AFP, he was still seen uploading his images to social media. His obsession: to tell as many people as possible what he had seen of what he had described as “a somewhat old-fashioned war, in the middle of Europe”.
A football enthusiast
Arman Soldin was born in Sarajevo and was one of the first evacuees in France in 1992 when the siege began. He was barely a year old. “Refugee stories touch me,” he told AFP’s Making Of blog last year, interviewed from kyiv as he 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,” he said.
A gifted footballer, he wore the colors of Stade Rennais in western France from 2006 to 2008 but had given up hope of a professional career. The Rouge et Noir club sent its condolences to his family and loved ones. He joined AFP in 2015 as an intern in the Rome office.
Arman had impressed so much that he was quickly hired there, in London the same year, where he found himself covering the turbulent Brexit years. He returned to Italy in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and found stories to tell even when everything was closed and everyone was confined, with the same humanity that characterized his work in Ukraine.
The journalist had volunteered at the start of the Russian invasion
“He had made a video of a guy dancing alone in front of the Vatican in deserted Rome, another video of a guy skateboarding in a completely dystopian city in Ukraine,” says a colleague. A large part of Arman’s images were also shot on a mobile phone, not only for lightness but also to less impress those he was interviewing.
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 was brave, creative and tenacious”
“He was brave, creative and tenacious,” AFP news director Phil Chetwynd paid tribute to him. “He was overflowing with energy, that’s even how he defined himself on the networks. Totally devoted to his job as a journalist,” said AFP Europe director Christine Buhagiar. Everyone who met Arman described his energy but also his communicative good humor.
On March 21, he celebrated his birthday with an AFP team in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine. “We had uncorked a good bottle for the occasion, a colleague had taken out a guitar,” said one of its editors, Antoine Lambroschini. “And he was there, a small delighted smile on his lips”.
International reactions after the death of the AFP journalist
Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of AFP journalist Arman Soldin killed on Tuesday in a rocket attack in eastern Ukraine, saying he shared “the pain of his relatives and all his colleagues”. “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,” said wrote on Twitter the French president.
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. We share the pain of his loved ones and all his colleagues.
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 9, 2023
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry offered its “sincere condolences” on Tuesday following the death of AFP journalist Arman Soldin, killed by a rocket strike near Bakhmout, in eastern Ukraine. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and colleagues,” the ministry wrote on Twitter, adding, “He dedicated his life to bringing truth to the world.”
“The world owes a debt to Arman” Soldin and to “the 10 other reporters and media workers who lost their lives” covering the conflict, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre reacted on Tuesday. “Our hearts go out to the family of Arman Soldin, who lost his life today on the front line of the war in Ukraine, and to his colleagues at AFP,” she said in a statement. , adding: “Journalism is one of the foundations of a free society.”
The Kremlin also said it was saddened by the death of the video coordinator, and called for clarification of the circumstances. “We need to understand the circumstances of the death of this journalist,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, urging not to “take at face value” Ukrainian claims naming Russians as the perpetrators of the strike deadly. “We can only be saddened by the death of the AFP video coordinator in Ukraine, he added.