It was Emmanuel Macron himself who confirmed the news. Monday, May 30, BFM-TV journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, was killed while accompanying a convoy to evacuate civilians from the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. “Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was in Ukraine to show the reality of war. On board a humanitarian bus, alongside civilians forced to flee to escape Russian bombs, he was fatally shot., wrote the head of state on Twitter. This is the eighth journalist – and second Frenchman – killed in Ukraine since the start of the Russian offensive on February 24.
According to several sources and testimonies, the young image reporter (JRI), who had worked for the non-stop news channel for six years, was hit by the shrapnel of a shell that fell near the armored police vehicle. Ukrainian territory in which he was, near the town of Sievierodonetsk. Maxime Brandstaetter, the journalist editor of BFM-TV who accompanied him in the back of the same vehicle, was “slightly injured” by a splinter in the leg, according to the chain of the Altice group. The two reporters’ Ukrainian translator, Oksana Leuta, was not affected.
« Double crime »
What dramas has “bereaved” the visit of Catherine Colonna, the new Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, who had just arrived in kyiv – a first for a member of the French executive since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. “It is a double crime which targets a humanitarian convoy and a journalist”, reacted the former spokesperson for Jacques Chirac, who learned the news while having lunch with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dimitri Kuleba. Earlier in the morning, M.me Colonna had gone to Boutcha, a martyr city located in the great suburbs of kyiv. “It is better to see things for real » and also “show, by going there, that we know who is attacked and who is the aggressor »she confided.
“It’s the Russian method. When we evacuated Mariupol, a convoy [de civils] out of two was targeted”, indicated Volodymyr Zelensky while receiving Catherine Colonna in the afternoon. During this hour-long interview with the Ukrainian President, the minister asked him to “ do everything possible so that the authorities of his country help France to shed light » on the death of Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff. Mme Colonna then told the journalists invited to the French Embassy for the occasion that she would demand “a transparent investigation as soon as possible”. She herself called the governor of the region to ask for his help on the precise circumstances of the journalist’s death. “I offer my condolences to his family and to his profession”she told the press: “Your work is essential, but be careful, you are in a country at war. » In a video released in the evening, Mr. Zelensky presented his “sincere condolences to Frédéric’s colleagues and family”.
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