The European and International Federations of Journalists (EFJ-IFJ) extend their condolences to the family and relatives of French photojournalist Antoni Lallican, who was killed by a drone on Friday 3 October in Ukraine. The EFJ and IFJ condemn this war crime and calls on the authorities to launch an investigation to identify those responsible.
This is the first time a journalist has been killed by a drone in Ukraine. The circumstances surrounding the incident, which occurred on Friday morning at 9:20 local time, near the eastern city of Druzhkivka, in the Donetsk region, remain under investigation. According to the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Lallican had been killed by a “targeted strike” from a first-person-view (FPV) drone. FPV drones allow operators to see their target before striking. A Ukrainian journalist, Heorgiy Ivanchenko, was injured during the same attack. Both journalists wore protective gear and bulletproof vests marked ‘Press’. Antoni Lallican was on assignment in Donbas for the Carcassonne-based photojournalism agency Hans Lucas.
Antoni Lallican is a Paris-based photojournalist. His work has been published in numerous media outlets, including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Mediapart, Der Spiegel, Zeit, Die Welt, Le Temps, Der Standard, La Presse… In March 2022, just after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he traveled to the country. Since then, he has been documenting the consequences of the war and has begun long-term work alongside residents of the Donbas mining basin in the southeast of Ukraine. In January, he won the 2024 Victor Hugo Prize for Committed Photography for his striking reportage ‘Suddenly the sky darkened’, dedicated to the war in Ukraine.
“Today, in Ukraine, the main threat to journalists, as to all civilians, is Russian drones hunting people,” said Sergiy Tomilenko, president of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU). These are not collateral victims of the war. By targeting journalists, the Russian army is deliberately hunting those trying to document war crimes. For journalists, every trip to the frontline zone is a deadly risk. Antoni Lallican took this risk again and again, coming to Ukraine, traveling to Donbas, documenting what many prefer not to see. He built a visual bridge between the world and Ukrainian reality. Now he himself has become part of this tragic story”.
Since Russia invaded the country, in 2022, 17 journalists have been killed in Ukraine: Antoni Lallican, Tetyana Kulyk, Ryan Evans, Arman Soldin, Bohdan Bitik, Brent Renaud, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, Ihor Hudenko, Maks Levin, Mantas Kvedaravičius, Oksana Baulina, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, Pierre Zakrzewski, Roman Nezhyborets, Yevgeny Bal, Yevheniy Sakun, Zoreslav Zamoysky.
“Alongside Antoni Lallican, these journalists have paid with their lives for their reporting in the field,” said EFJ and IFJ. “We pay tribute to the courage of Antoni Lallican and all the journalists who continue to cover the war. We demand that the perpetrators of his crime be brought to justice”.
Source: EFJ
