AFP journalist Arman Soldin killed in shelling in Ukraine

AFP video journalist Arman Soldin was killed in rocket fire near Chasiv Yar, Donetsk Region, on Tuesday, May 9, AFP journalists who witnessed the tragedy reported.

The shelling took place on the outskirts of the town at around 4:30 p.m. With a group of Ukrainian soldiers, the AFP team came under the fire of Grad MLRS rockets. Soldin, 32, was killed when a rocket hit not far from where he was staying. The rest of the team was not injured, CBS News reports.

“The entire agency is devastated by the loss of Arman,” said AFP head Fabrice Fries. “His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers journalists face daily when covering Ukraine’s conflict.”

Arman Soldin was born in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and was a French citizen. He started working for AFP as an intern in the Rome bureau in 2015 and later moved to London. He was part of the first AFP team sent to Ukraine after the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022 – arrived the next day. Since September, Soldin lived in Ukraine and regularly traveled to the front line.

“Arman‘s brilliant work embodied everything that made us so proud of AFP journalism in Ukraine,” Phil Chetwynd, the agency’s global news director, said in a statement. “Arman‘s death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers of covering this war. Our thoughts today are with his family and friends and with all our people working in Ukraine.”

AFP’s European director, Christine Buhagiar, remembers Soldin as “enthusiastic, energetic, and courageous.” “He was a real operational reporter, always ready to work even in the most difficult places,” she says. “He was completely devoted to his work.”

The President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), Sergiy Tomilenko, in a post on Facebook, recalls that this is the second murder of a journalist in the last two weeks, for which Russia should be punished. Ukrainian producer of the Italian La Repubblica Bohdan Bitik was recently killed in Kherson.

“According to the NUJU, Arman is the 59^th media worker to die since the full-scale invasion, and the 14^th journalist killed by Russia while performing professional duties,” wrote Sergiy Tomilenko. “Words of solidarity to colleagues from French newsrooms and French unions of journalists, members of the International and European Federations of Journalists (EFJ). Words of support to the journalist’s family and relatives. We remember every media worker whose life was taken by the war. Journalists are important! We demand a tribunal over Russia.”

Literally, a day before his death, Soldin talked about the horrors of war, posting on social networks a video of doctors who operated on a wounded soldier’s heart.

A cat is sitting on Soldin‘s back in his Twitter profile picture. The journalist loved animals… Last week, an animal rescue group twitted a video of Soldin and his team rescuing an injured hedgehog from a trench in Ukraine.