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Tag: BBC journalist

  • Russia-Ukraine war: Ex-BBC journalist Bondarenko dies on duty at front line

    Russia-Ukraine war: Ex-BBC journalist Bondarenko dies on duty at front line

    Former journalist for BBC News Ukraine Oleksandr Bondarenko, was killed while performing his job on the front lines in Ukraine.

    He volunteered for Ukraine’s territorial defence at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, working as a communications expert and media trainer and then becoming part of the military.

    Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known.

    Close friends said only that “death caught up with him in a battle”.

    Friends, former BBC colleagues and Ukraine’s wider media community paid tributes to a talented journalist who went on to be a successful communications professional.

    Known as Sasha or Sashko, Bondarenko was originally from Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

    He worked for the BBC’s Ukrainian Service from 2007 to 2011 as a news reporter, presenter and editor of radio programmes broadcast from Kyiv. He left the BBC to work for other media organisations.

    At the start of the war Sasha Bondarenko worked as a communications expert and media trainer
    Image caption,At the start of the war Sasha Bondarenko worked as a communications expert and media trainer.

    At the start of the war he was in charge of special projects for leading Ukrainian communications agency, RMA, whose staff paid tribute to his intelligence, humour and voice.

    He was one of many thousands of Ukrainians who have left their civilian jobs across all walks of life to defend their country from the Russian invasion.

    Among well-known Ukrainians who enlisted were members of one of Ukraine’s top rock bands, Antytila, who became army medics, and broadcasters Pavlo Kazarin and Yurii Matsarskyi.

    A number of journalists have lost their lives reporting on the war too. A Ukrainian fixer working with an Italian reporter was killed this week as they came under fire near the southern city Kherson.

    Vasyl Samokhvalov of RMA paid tribute to Sasha Bondarenko as a man who volunteered on day one: “A human with a will of steel. A human with the clearest motivation. A human with the best music playlist.”

    The former head of the BBC’s Ukrainian Service, Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski, said the corporation was extremely lucky to have him on the Kyiv team: “It was always new challenges with this extraordinary man. Including the last, heroic one, to defend his country from aggression.”

    Bondarenko graduated from Luhansk teacher-training college and started his career in journalism at a local radio station in the east of Ukraine, before working for leading Ukrainian TV channels and and then the BBC’s Ukrainian Service.

    Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski
    Image caption,BBC Ukraine’s editor-in-chief Marta Shokalo (R) paid tribute to her former colleague

    “I look at our photos together and can’t stop crying even though I can only remember our carefree days in the Kyiv office and how we laughed together,” said Marta Shokalo, BBC Ukraine’s editor-in-chief.

    He went on to work as a TV reporter, covering the mass Maidan anti-government protests in Kyiv in 2013-14 and later Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.

    As a native of eastern Ukraine his insight of the complexities of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia was seen as especially valuable.

    A keen athlete, he achieved a long-held ambition of swimming the Bosphorus. His last photo published on Facebook was captioned: “Somewhere in the Kharkiv woods.”

    Colleagues described an unpretentious but highly knowledgeable journalist who seemed "brilliant at everything"
    Image caption,Colleagues described an unpretentious but highly knowledgeable journalist who seemed “brilliant at everything”

  • UK summons Chinese ambassador after arrest of BBC journalist

    The United Kingdom has summoned the Chinese ambassador in London for a rebuke after the arrest and alleged assault of a BBC journalist covering protests against Beijing’s zero-COVID-19 policy.

    Zheng Zeguang was called in to the foreign office on Tuesday after the incident involving Ed Lawrence in Shanghai, which Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called “deeply disturbing”.

    “It is incredibly important that we protect media freedom,” Cleverly told reporters at a NATO meeting in Romania, confirming Zheng had been summoned.

    “It’s incredibly important that journalists are able to go about their business unmolested and without fear of attack,” the foreign minister said.

    Lawrence was hauled away by police on Sunday evening while filming a protest against COVID restrictions, one of many that have rocked China in recent days.

    The BBC said he was assaulted by police before being released several hours later.

    China hit back against British criticism of the journalist’s treatment and Downing Street’s urging that police show respect towards the COVID protesters.

    “The UK side is in no position to pass judgement on China’s COVID policy or other internal affairs,” an embassy spokesperson said before Zheng was summoned, noting Britain’s high pandemic death rate.

    The government in London this month also expressed concern over reports that Beijing has been operating undeclared police outposts in foreign countries, including Britain.

    A senior Chinese diplomat was summoned to the foreign office last month after his consulate colleagues in Manchester in northwest England were accused of beating up a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester.

    The incidents have fuelled political pressure on the new government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to get tough with China.

    But Sunak is treading a fine line between defending freedoms and antagonising the world’s second-biggest economy.

    In a speech on Monday, he described the “golden era” of UK-China relations declared by former Prime Minister David Cameron as “over”.

    But Sunak also called for “robust pragmatism” in dealing with Britain’s competitors, disappointing critics who want him to go further in confronting Beijing.

    Changes on the business front

    Separately on Tuesday, the UK removed the Chinese nuclear firm CGN from construction of its new Sizewell C nuclear power station, which will now be built only with French commercial partner EDF.

    That decision was taken after UK government departments were ordered last week to stop installing Chinese-made surveillance cameras at “sensitive sites”.

    The week before, a Chinese company was ordered to sell most of its majority stake in Britain’s biggest semiconductor maker, Newport Wafer Fab.

    A spokesman for Sunak declined to say if national security factors drove the decision on CGN.

    But he told reporters: “Certainly we think it’s right that the UK has more energy security, energy independence.”

    Source: Aljazeera.com