Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, journalist reporting in Donbass for BFMTV, was killed in eastern Ukraine while accompanying civilians on board a humanitarian bus near Severodonetsk, we learned on Monday May 30. The 32-year-old had worked for BFMTV for six years and was hit by “shrapnel while following a humanitarian operation,” his employer said shortly after the journalist’s death was announced on Twitter by Emmanuel Macron.
The reporter was “killed by a Russian bombardment on a humanitarian operation while exercising his duty to inform,” tweeted Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, condemning a “double crime which targets a humanitarian convoy and a journalist.
A version, however, contradicted by an officer of the people’s militia of the self-proclaimed Republic of Lugansk, in the Donbass, who hastened to relay, on Monday, to the official Russian news agency TASS, false information to justify the death of the French journalist: “He is not presented only as a journalist. Even Ukrainian media say he was a volunteer. So we do not rule out (the possibility) that he was engaged in the delivery of arms and ammunition to the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. (…) I would not qualify him as a journalist since all his activities were, probably, of another type. He can be called a foreign mercenary. And it is absolutely clear that he was an accomplice of the Ukrainian far-right forces. We have seen what help such volunteers provide to Ukrainian troops – they deliver ammunition which is used to kill civilians”. And to add: “Now they are trying to put this case forward to excite the international community and present us in a bad light, and accuse us of killing journalists”.
Serious false accusations, which the TASS dispatch hastened to resume, writing: “It is unlikely that the French citizen who died on Monday in the territory of the People’s Republic of Lugansk controlled by kyiv is linked to journalism (.. .)”.
Another dispatch from the Russian news agency TASS, published on Monday evening, adds that the “French national” was “accredited by the Ukrainian armed forces and that he did not carry any sign clearly identifying him as a journalist”. quoting Leonard Svidovsky, head of the “Union of Journalists of the Lugansk People’s Republic”. “His press card was issued by the Ukrainian armed forces”, adds this official, who also indicates that at the time of his death, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff wore “no sign identifying him as a journalist”.
On Monday, the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Unit of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office told Le Figaro that it had opened an investigation after the death of Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff. The flagrancy investigation entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes (OCLCH) also relates to “the injuries suffered by his colleague Maxime Brandstaetter”, present with him during the report, said the Pnat.
