An American journalist was killed in Ukraine when he and a colleague came under fire near the capital, Kyiv, regional police and a government official have said.
Russian troops opened fire on the car of Brent Renaud and another journalist in Irpin, about 10km (6 miles) northwest of the capital, the Kyiv police force said in a statement on Sunday. It said the injured journalist was taken to a hospital in Kyiv.
The adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, Anton Herashchenko, confirmed the incident on a Telegram channel.
There was no immediate comment from the Russian authorities.
The journalist being treated at the hospital said he and a colleague were shot after they were stopped at a checkpoint just after a bridge in Irpin.
Juan Arredondo told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in an interview from the hospital before being taken for surgery that the colleague who was with him was hit in the neck and remained on the ground earlier on Sunday.
Camilli told The Associated Press news agency that she was at the hospital when Arredondo arrived and that Arredondo himself had been wounded, hit in the lower back when stopped at a Russian checkpoint.
He told Camilli that he and Renaud were filming refugees fleeing the area when they were shot at while in a car approaching a checkpoint. The driver turned around but the firing at them continued, Arredondo added.
Arredondo said an ambulance took him to the hospital and that Renaud was “left behind”.
The New York Times, responding to reports that Renaud was a reporter for the paper, said he had previously worked for it but had not been on assignment for the Times in Ukraine.
“We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death,” a spokesperson for the paper said on Twitter, naming the journalist thought to have been killed.
“Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to The New York Times over the years.”
“Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago.”
Asked about the reports, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that the United States government would be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and would then “execute appropriate consequences”.
“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 said.
