Washington. An American journalist was killed and another wounded by Russian troops in the town of Irpin, near Kyiv, as they drove to film refugees, Ukrainian police said Sunday.
Andrey Nebytov, the head of the Kiev regional police, said film director Brent Renault, 50, was killed when Russian troops opened fire. Nebytov posted a graphic photo of Renault’s alleged body on Facebook, as well as photos of his American passport and media ID issued by The New York Times.
A Times spokeswoman said Renaud was “a talented filmmaker who has collaborated with The New York Times for many years”, most recently in 2015, but he “did not work at any table at The Times in Ukraine”.
Documentary filmmaker Juan Arredondo, also from the United States, was wounded in the attack, according to local reports and a video released by a spokesman for a state hospital in Kyiv. Arredondo, who was lying on a hospital gurney, said he and Reno were on their way to film people leaving Kyiv when they crossed a checkpoint and came under fire.
“Someone offered to take us to another bridge, and we crossed the checkpoint and they started shooting at us. So the driver turned around and they kept firing, there were two of us. My friend Brent Reno and he was shot and left behind,” Arredondo said. “I saw him get shot in the neck and we split up and they pulled me out.”
‘He was shot and stayed at home’: American journalist Juan Arredondo describes the moment he and Brent Renault were attacked by Russian forces at a checkpoint in Irpen, Ukraine, on Sunday. Reno was shot dead. https://t.co/BmzIVT54TR pic.twitter.com/NvtYZ1lgM4
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Nebytov, chief of the Kiev police, wrote that Renault “paid [with] his life for trying to highlight the ingenuity, cruelty and ruthlessness of the aggressor,” reads the automated translation of his Facebook post.
According to a biography on their website, Reno and his brother Craig Reno have reported from a number of world hotspots over the past two decades, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt. The couple won a 2015 Peabody Award for an eight-part documentary for Vice News about a Chicago school for students with severe emotional problems.
Brent Reno filming in Iraq in 2016. CBS News/Omar Omar
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called reports of Reno’s death “shocking and horrifying,” telling Face the Nation Sunday that the US and its allies would impose “appropriate consequences” on Russia for the assassination.
“I will simply say that this is an integral part of the brazen aggression on the part of the Russians, when they targeted civilians, hospitals, places of worship and journalists,” Sullivan said. .
Lee Cohen and Richard Escobedo provided reporting.
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