A sad year has passed since the day when the news of the death of Sarajevo-born Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old reporter and cameraman for the France Press Agency (AFP), shook the journalistic community, as well as the entire public. His name rang out around the world that May 9.
AFP video coordinator Arman Soldin was killed on May 9, 2023 by rocket fire near Chashiv Yar, on the outskirts of a town near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. A team of four AFP journalists was moving away from the front line when Grad rockets were fired at them. The rocket landed very close to Arman and he died almost instantly, while the rest of the team was unharmed. His colleagues testified that he died “with a camera in his hand”. And just one day later, Arman was supposed to leave Donbas, go to Kiev and move away from the risk zone. He never got the chance for that.
Arman Soldin was first of all from Sarajevo, and then a reporter and cameraman for AFP. His life began in the war, but unfortunately in the war, and ended. Arman lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Great Britain, Italy, Ukraine.
Arman, a French citizen, began his journalistic career as an intern at the AFP correspondent in Rome in 2015. The impression he left was so good that he was hired almost immediately. After Rome, he joined his colleagues at the agency in London, where his first task as a video journalist was to cover events surrounding Brexit. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic brought him back to Rome, where, despite all the banning measures, as his colleagues point out, he always managed to find a good story.
In February 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Arman volunteered to be one of the agency’s first special correspondents. As part of the first AFP team and one of the first French journalists to go to the Ukrainian war zone, Arman arrived in Ukraine on the second day of the Russian invasion. From September 2023, he led the team’s reporting and regularly traveled to the front lines of the battles in the east and south.
His brilliant work and extraordinary footage have made headlines around the world, and his colleagues describe him as a fantastic reporter who risked his life to tell a story. Nothing could stop Arman from conveying the truth despite the dangers he was exposed to every day. He witnessed and brought back images of a fierce military battle and destruction. At the same time, he had a strong sympathy for the stories of “ordinary” people, and as those who worked with him point out, thanks to his exceptional gift and ability, even in the horror of war, he managed to find the breath of life. In the whirlwind and chaos of war, he never failed to document with special sensibility the everyday life of the population fighting for survival. Exposing himself to risk and crossfire, he recounted the lives of ordinary people caught up in the conflict, while filming people with his cell phone, so that the effect of the “big camera” would not be too stressful for them. And his work was never finished, as he said, because after hard work in the field, he tirelessly posted his pictures on social networks with the desire to explain to as many people as possible what was happening there. Since he loved animals very much, he found ways to save them even in wartime circumstances, and his story about the injured hedgehog he rescued from a trench resonated.
His colleagues around the world said that “Arman Soldin was not only a dedicated and passionate journalist, but also a fearless man who risked his life to bring the truth and shed light on the terrible reality of war. His commitment to journalism and unwavering pursuit of the truth was admirable and he made a significant contribution to the field, leaving an indelible mark on the profession as AFP’s video coordinator in Ukraine.”
Photo: AFP
