Monday, March 14, 2022

US photojournalist Juan Arredondo injured during attack in Ukraine that killed filmmaker Brent Renaud

Alex Woodward 1 day ago
THE INDEPENDENT, UK

Two other journalists were injured in an attack that killed an award-winning American documentary filmmaker in Ukraine on 13 March, according to Kyiv region police in Ukraine.

© via REUTERS A U.S. journalist receives medical attention after being shot and wounded in the town of Irpin, at a hospital in Kyiv

US photojournalist Juan Arredondo, an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School in New York City, described being shot while traveling with a group of foreign journalists through a checkpoint in nearby Irpin while on the way to film refugees fleeing the city during the Russian assault.

Wounded reporter tells how former New York Times filmmaker was shot dead by Russian forces in Irpin

“We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car,” he said in a video from an Italian news agency and shared by Ukrainian officials on Sunday.

“Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” he said. “So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting. There was two of us, my friend Brent Renaud, and he’s been shot and left behind. … I saw he was shot in the neck.”

Another video from a reporter with German newspaper Bild shows Ukrainian medics carrying Mr Arredondo on a stretcher as he held his camera on his chest.

A third victim traveling in the same car was also wounded, according to Kyiv authorities.

Ukrainian officials have blamed Russian forces for the attack near a bridge leading from Irpin into Bucha, which is occupied by Russian troops.

A statement from Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll to CNN said the university does not have “any independent information [about Mr Arredondo’s] injuries at this time but are working now to learn more and to see if we can help.”

Mr Arredondo, like Renaud, was among the 2019 fellows at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

According to his Instagram, Mr Arredondo recently photographed Ukrainian volunteers cutting cloth to make camouflage nets.
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Renaud is believed to be the second journalist killed in Ukraine, after camera operator Yevhenii Sakun was killed on 1 March, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of US journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the organisation’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement. “Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his killing is “shocking and horrifying.”

“We’ll be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,” he told CBS News on Sunday. “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.”

Anthony Bellanger, general secretary for the International Federation of Journalists, said the deaths of Brent Renaud and Yevhenii Sakun “cannot go unpunished.”

“The authorities must do everything possible to identify the perpetrators of these war crimes,” he said in a statement.”

“These systematic attacks on journalists and other war crimes require a strong response from the international community,” added European Federations of Journalists general secretary Ricardo Gutierrez.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.

OBITUARY
Brent Renaud, journalist killed in Ukraine, was an acclaimed filmmaker and producer

Arkansas native was gathering material for report about refugees when he was gunned down by Russian soldiers near Kyiv
TIMES OF ISRAEL
13 March 2022

Brent Renaud attends the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering, died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine.

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death. Renaud and Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award for “Arming the Mexican Cartels,” a documentary on how guns trafficked from the United States fueled rampant drug gang violence.

“This guy was the absolute best,” Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. ”He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.”

The details of Renaud’s death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two had been traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot. Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

“We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.


The press card of New York Times journalist and US citizen Brent Renaud, who was shot by Russian troops in Irpin, March 13, 2022. (Screen grab/Facebook)

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

“In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders,” Markushyn said.

Responding to news of Renaud’s death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and other civilians.

“This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the committee said on Twitter.

Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won a Peabody Award for “Last Chance High,” an HBO series about a school for at-risk youth on Chicago’s West Side. The brothers’ litany of achievements include two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and acclaimed productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and Vice News.


Peabody Award Recipients Craig Renaud, left, and Brent Renaud attend the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York. 
(Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Center for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, and extremism in Africa.

Putzel, who worked with Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

“Nowhere was too dangerous,” Putzel said. “It was his bravery, but also because he deeply, deeply cared.”

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig’s wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.

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