Photo: Todd Wiillamson/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
Brent Renaud, an award-winning American journalist and formerNew York Timescontributor, has reportedly been killed in Ukraine.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, confirmed Renaud’s deathin a statement toTimes.
Gerashchenko said Renaud “paid with his life for attempting to expose the insidiousness, cruelty, and ruthlessness of the aggressor.”
“Early reports that he worked for theTimescirculated because he was wearing aTimespress badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago,” the statement read.
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“We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car”, he told theInternazionalejournalist in the clip. “Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they start shooting at us.”
“So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting,” Arredondo continued, before noting Renaud had “been shot and left behind.” He added, “I saw him being shot in the neck and we got split.”
Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for theTimes, said the outlet is “deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death.”
TheTimescalled Renaud “a talented photographer and filmmaker” in their statement addressing the journalist’s death.
Ann Marie Lipinski, a curator for the Nieman Foundation, remembered the late Renaud as a “gifted and kind” person whose “work was infused with humanity.”
“He was killed today outside Kiev, and the world and journalism are lesser for it,“Lipinski wrote on Twitter, adding: “We are heartsick.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned Sunday’s shooting. CPJ program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna called the attack “totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law.”
“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of U.S. journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine,“Martinez de la Serna said in Sunday’s statement, later adding, “Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”
Renaud, who frequently worked with his brother Craig Renaud, was well-known for his video projects highlighting “humanistic vérité stories” in some of the world’s most conflict-affected areas,according to their website. In 2014, the veteran reporters won a Peabody award for their Vice News documentary about Chicago schools.
On Sunday’s episode of CBS’sFace The Nation, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the U.S. will work with Ukrainians to determine “appropriate consequences” for the “shocking and horrifying” killing.
“I will just say that this is part and parcel of what has been a brazen aggression on the part of the Russians where they have targeted civilians, they have targeted hospitals, they have targeted places of worship, and they have targeted journalists,” Sullivan, 45, said,per CBS News.
Later on CNN’sState of the Union, the National Security Advisor said the attack was another example of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cruelty following the country’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
“If in fact an American journalist was killed, it is a shocking and horrifying event,” Sullivan said. “It is one more example of the brutality of Vladimir Putin and his forces as they’ve targeted schools and mosques and hospitals and journalists. And it is why we are working so hard to impose severe consequences on him and to try to help the Ukrainians with every form of military assistance we can muster.”
source: people.com
