Bülent Kilic / AFP
Arman Soldin, an AFP journalist and video coordinator in Ukraine, was a child of war. War left an indelible mark on him when he fled Sarajevo in his mother’s arms. And it killed him, aged 32, in eastern Ukraine. In between, the journalist devoured life, always full of smiles, laughter and love.
On May 9, 2023, Arman was killed by a barrage of Grad rockets near Chasiv Yar, a Ukrainian town close to Bakhmut. He was working on a story from a Ukrainian army position with four AFP colleagues: Emmanuel Peuchot, Dimitar Dilkoff, Oleksiy Obolensky and Anders Linderson. Moments before, "he was just like always -- he was making jokes", photographer Dimitar Dilkoff says. Arman died with a "beautiful face" that showed no sign of suffering, "with his camera in his hand", says Emmanuel Peuchot, his text colleague.
Widely praised for his empathy, his courage and his professionalism, the 32-year-old French citizen had, just days earlier, finished some stories depicting both the intensity of the fighting and the threat of death hanging over people outside the headlines.
In bomb-scarred Siversk, Arman followed Oleksandr, a former welder who became one of the war's unsung heroes by delivering bread on a puttering moped to isolated old people near the front line. Near Bakhmut, he spent most of a night with wounded soldiers who were receiving first aid.
On May 1, he tweeted of his "pure terror" as, prone on the ground, he filmed Russian rockets raining down a few dozen metres away from his team.
Credits: familY, Yasuyoshi Chiba, Dimitar Dilkoff, Aris Messinis.
Panic, destruction and death were words once used to describe Bosnia, Arman's country of origin, which he fled as a one-year-old in the arms of his mother.
"Arman had the instinct of a journalist who understood, dissected the Bosnian war. He may not have had any ties with Ukraine but he chose to go there because he wanted to make himself useful. He wanted to seek the truth" said Oksana Soldin, his mother.
Arman arrived in France on a humanitarian flight organised by health minister Bernard Kouchner after a series of strikes on Sarajevo.
"Shells had blasted the staircases of our house in Sarajevo. I managed to get aboard the plane. Kouchner was sitting near me. We spent the flight on the floor, with Arman in my arms," remembers Oksana, now aged 59. It would be six years in France before the family returned to Bosnia, once the bloody ethnic conflict had finally cooled. More than 100,000 people died in the fighting that raged until 1995. "Sarajevo was devastated. Arman would ask us questions all the time. We were the same age but his mind was older," remembers Aldin Suljevic, who became Arman’s "friend for life" in primary school.
After his parents separated, Arman returned to France in 2002 with his mother, a philosophy and sociology professor. The family settled in the western city of Rennes. "We went through a testing time of being rootless. We found ourselves right at the bottom of the heap as refugees. That's why our family is so close, why we talk every day," says Arman's brother Sven, 26.
He saw his older sibling as "invincible", "an idol" and "the most important person in his life".
Each summer, Arman, Sven and their sister Ena would return to Bosnia to see their father Sulejman, himself a well-known journalist.
Aged just 11, Arman played at writing news alerts in his bedroom in Rennes. And at 16, he uploaded to YouTube a compilation of excruciating images titled "Sarajevo in War", soundtracked by the sorrowful Adagio of Italian composer Tomaso Albinoni. As a teenager, Arman — who was also a very good student — was a passionate football player. He played in the youth team of top-tier club Stade Rennais from 2006 to 2008, only giving up on a professional sporting career due to knee injuries.
"Football was a big part of his life," his brother Sven said. "He was extremely good, extremely talented. He had something extra."
CReDITS: Laure Van Ruymbeke, Sebastien Salom-Gomis, Mathieu Champeau, Mewen Lepretre
A French, English and Italian speaker, Arman studied in London, Lyon and Sarajevo before securing an internship at AFP's Rome bureau in 2015.
Video reporter Sonia Logre, who trained him there, remembers him as "a dream intern". "He wanted to do everything, see everything, know everything. He wanted humbly to learn, had a desire to discover Italy and a deep love of life." AFP's former sports correspondent in Rome, Emmanuel Barranguet, says Arman was "beaming all the time". "He even smiled when he would play football. He out-dribbled me I don't know how many times, smiling all the while."
Arman was hired by AFP in London that same year, where outside work and covering Brexit, he threw himself into big-city life "partying from Friday night to Sunday" with a close group of friends, remembers ex-girlfriend Diane Dupre. The young reporter was nevertheless frustrated at "not being out in the field enough". During all his years in London, Arman lit up the office, “incorrigibly cheeky”, always cracking jokes. In the office, everyone fought to sit next to him, which guaranteed a cheerful day.
"He could have you in fits of laughter even at the most stressful moments," his colleague Lucy Adler remembers.
Arman quickly stood out within AFP as a promising young journalist. "He was an unpolished gem. Enthusiastic, a self-starter, stamping his feet as soon as he was sitting at a desk for more than a day. What he wanted to do was to be in the field, to tell the world about people’s stories and about the ups and downs of the countries that he reported on," says Christine Buhagiar, Europe Director at AFP.
Alongside his AFP work, Arman became UK sports correspondent for French premium TV channel Canal+ from 2019. Deputy sports editor David Barouh recalls his smile and a "wild charm" that meant "everyone loved him, professionally and as a human being". "He won everyone over," Barouh adds. Whenever Arman returned from Ukraine, he would slip instantly back into the luxurious world of the Premier League and its immaculate turf — days after being under bombardment.
He had volunteered to be among the first AFP special correspondents sent into Ukraine — just as he had volunteered to cover the first lethal months of Europe's Covid-19 epidemic in Italy.
After a long trip through Poland and Ukraine, he arrived in Kyiv on February 28, when the capital was threatened by Russian troops. Right away, he filmed an impressive story of panicked refugees under bombardment in the suburb of Irpin. "Being a Bosnian refugee myself, I can 'relate' to their fate, as people say in English," Arman said at the time, looking at the heart-wrenching scenes.
"Three weeks of reporting that changed my life," he commented on Twitter. on March 21. Bitten by the bug, he grudgingly left but with one thought only: to come back.
Over the following year, he learned all about the daily reality of combat, particularly on the Donbas front line, where he spent many long assignments. Arman, who had followed a training course on covering conflict zones with the GIGN in 2021, was in his element amid the adrenaline and the danger. "You never know what's going to happen. It's not business as usual… I keep coming back here. I've been here for more than 8 months and I keep wanting to come back. And it's important for us to be here, especially foreign press, to try to tell people what’s going on," he told Ukrainian television.
Arman's best friend, Lucas Colin, believes his unparalleled commitment to reporting the war in Ukraine was rooted in his own story and his family history. "He was happy to be able to close the loop during this war. He used to explain to me that he needed to be a mediator between this war and us, his friends, family and society," Lucas says.
"Throughout this time, Arman had no doubt where he needed to be. He was among the first AFP special correspondents to make it to Kyiv to help our local team already on the ground after the invasion and over the next few months he returned again and again to the country. Not just to Kyiv -- to Irpin, Kherson, Kharkiv, Izyum and elsewhere. And, finally, of course, to the Bakhmut area, where he lost his life… He wanted to be on the ground to bear witness to the suffering caused by this war. And above all, he wanted to capture the human stories underneath the bullets and the shells." — Phil Chetwynd, AFP Global News Director
"When he came back, he wouldn’t let anything show through. He filtered quite a lot of stuff out," Lucas adds.
CrEdit: Yasuyoshi Chiba
Every day Arman posted on social media, publishing videos that went around the world. He shot quickly, sharply, precisely and developed a real signature style, his friend Marc-Henri Maisonhaute says, adding that he was "blown away by the tone, the colour of his footage from Ukraine — kind of Band of Brothers style."
In late April this year, the AFP team found a badly hurt hedgehog in the bottom of a crater. Arman took it upon himself to feed and care for the creature back at AFP's base. Just a few days later, the hedgehog — "Lucky" as the videojournalist dubbed him in Twitter posts — was healthy again and is now famous on social media. He was set free. "Amid this cute story, don't forget there is a bloody war going on and millions of people are displaced. Help by donating to NGOs," Arman wrote in one of his final posts on Twitter.
Besides his daily reporting, the chipper journalist with his big round glasses who "wanted to embody the war without making himself the story" had another project. He had begun working with an artist on a graphic novel about Ukraine, to "get people to understand what's happening on the ground", Diane Dupre says. Arman had floated the idea of leaving Ukraine at some point in the near future. Apart from his graphic novel, he also aspired to be sent to other positions abroad or to missions in other fields.
He was a "handsome guy with a mind full of thoughts", his friend Marc-Henri says. An emotional guy who cried at movies, an avid reader of essays, of Nietzsche, and an adept of the concept of "amor fati" ("love of fate").
“Sadly, we will not see our Arman return from his mission… He will not sing a song at full volume to release stress after a particularly difficult reporting mission. He will not save any more hedgehogs." — Fabrice Fries, AFP Chief Executive
Arman’s disappearance "left a hole" in the heart of all those who knew him — and there were so many of them — and of those who weren't lucky enough to get to know him. Portraits showing him smiling with his camera in hand, are displayed on the facade of the AFP headquarters, at the Stade Rennais football stadium and on a Ukrainian cathedral in London.
"Deep in our hearts, we will remember your generous smile, your laughter, your courage, your care for others, your energy, your enthusiasm, your zest for life. All that you were helps us today. It helps us to stay strong, to keep living and smiling through the pain." — Emmanuel Peuchot, AFP journalist
For his mother, for his loved ones, he simply was "the whole of humanity".
Credit : Dimitar Dilkoff