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A video journalist working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, was killed by a rocket near the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, AFP said on Tuesday. Some of the heaviest battles of the war were being fought in and around the city of Bakhmut.
Journalist, Arman Soldin, 32, and four colleagues were with Ukrainian soldiers when they came under Grad rocket attack on Saturday afternoon, the agency said. Mr. Soldin was killed. No one on the other team, including the security adviser, was injured.
Mr. Soldin is the 17th journalist to be killed in Ukraine since 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His death comes just two weeks after a Ukrainian journalist was killed and an Italian journalist wounded in an attack on the road to the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.
Mr. Soldin was one of the agency’s first reporters to arrive in Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, and he regularly reports from the front lines. He survived a close-range rocket attack last week while reporting on soldiers digging trenches near Bakhmut.
Mr Soldin also shared lighter moments from the frontline – last month, he rescued an injured porcupine found after a Russian attack on Chasiv Yar. Mr. Soldin and his friends created a makeshift shelter for the hedgehog, whom he named Bejo; collect insects for food; and “start googling what baby hedgehogs need,” Mr. Soldin wrote on Twitter.
When Lucky finally receives water from a bottle made of medical equipment, Mr. Soldin rejoices: “I’M OFFICIALLY DADDY!”
Mr. Soldin, a French citizen born in Bosnia, “is courageous, creative and tenacious. He is an excellent journalist who is committed to the story,” Phil Chetwynd, AFP’s global news director, said in a statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Mr Soldin on Tuesday. tweet that he had been brave at the front since the first hour of the conflict “to establish the truth. To tell us.” He added, “We are grieving with his loved ones and all his friends.”
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