A photo shows a commemorative plaque in tribute to AFP cameraman Arman Soldin killed in Ukraine, on the esplanade of the University Centre in Vichy, central France, on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Olivier Chassignole / AFP)
Vichy: French authorities on Wednesday unveiled an esplanade in the central city of Vichy named after Arman Soldin, an AFP journalist killed in Ukraine in 2023 while covering the conflict.
"There are men whose light never goes out, and Arman Soldin was one of them," Vichy's Mayor Frederic Aguilera said during the ceremony that was attended by Soldin's mother, brother and sister.
Soldin, AFP's video coordinator in Ukraine, was killed in a rocket attack near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakmut on May 9, 2023, more than a year after the Russian invasion began. He was 32.
He was reporting in Chasiv Yar, near the front line in the eastern region of Donetsk, alongside Ukrainian soldiers.
The city of Vichy is the birthplace of one of the most famous French journalists, Albert Londres, and hosts a school that offers journalism studies.
Aguilera said he was a "reporter and everyday hero who risked his life to inform us and give a voice to those who have none".
"Your son was a just man, a man of integrity," he told Soldin's mother, speaking at the ceremony also attended by journalism students.
Born in Sarajevo, Soldin was a French national. As an infant, he fled fighting in Bosnia with his family, taking a humanitarian flight to France on April 25, 1992.
"No one smiles like you," said Soldin's mother Oksana.
"You thought you could save the world from its endless and illegitimate thirst for self-sabotage," she added.
"You ran that day with your camera well ahead of the others, filming the horrors of others."
French President Emmanuel Macron has hailed Soldin's "bravery" in a letter sent to AFP.
