A second journalist was injured, according to multiple reports
American journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker Brent Renaud has been killed in Irpin, Ukraine with another journalist injured, according to multiple reports.
Work from the 51-year-old award-winning writer and filmmaker has appeared in outlets like the New York Times – and in 2015, he won a Peabody Award for his journalistic work. As reported in multiple publications, Renaud was killed by Russian forces whilst in Irpin, Ukraine, just outside Kyiv.
A second US photographer, Juan Arredondo, was also injured in the incident.
As detailed in local reports and by multiple Ukrainian sources, Renaud was hit in the neck whilst coming under fire from Russian forces on Sunday (March 13).
In the wake of this news, Clifford Levy, deputy managing editor of the New York Times, released a statement sharing his condolences and confirming to readers that Renaud was not working for the publication at the time of the incident.
“[The New York Times] is deeply saddened to learn of the death of an American journalist in Ukraine, Brent Renaud. Brent was a talented photographer and film-maker, but he was not on assignment for the New York Times in Ukraine. Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge he had been issued for an assignment many years ago.
“Brent’s death is a terrible loss,” he added. “Brave journalists like Brent take tremendous risks to bear witness and to tell the world about the devastation and suffering caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv police chief Andrei Nebitov also released a statement, which said:
“The occupiers are cynically killing even journalists of international media who are trying to show the truth about the atrocities of Russian troops in Ukraine.”
According to the Guardian, Renaud and Arredondo had travelled to Ukraine to film refugees escaping the town of Irpin before being fired upon by Russian forces, with Arredondo believing the duo had driven into an ambush.
Speaking from hospital, the injured photographer said: “We crossed the first bridge in Irpin. We were going to film all the refugees leaving. We got into a car … someone offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint and they started shooting at us.
“So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting … and there was two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud and he’s been shot and left behind.”
When asked on the status of Renaud during the same interview, Arredondo admitted that he was unsure of his friend’s current whereabouts: “I don’t know,” he said. “I saw he’d been shot in the neck. And we got split.”
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