US Journalist Brent Renaud Killed in Ukraine, Kyiv Police Say

Brent Renaud attends The 74th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York on May 31, 2015. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Peabody Awards)

U.S. journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud was fatally shot in a combat zone near Kyiv, Ukraine, the region’s police chief said on March 13.

Andrey Nebitov, who heads the National Police in the Kyiv region, accused Russian troops of killing Renaud in Irpin, a northwestern suburb of Kyiv. The town has been the target of heavy shelling by Russian forces over the past week.

“A 51-year-old world-renowned media correspondent was shot in Irpin today,” Nebitov wrote on Facebook, adding that “another journalist is injured.”

Nebitov also shared photos that purportedly showed Renaud’s bloodied body, his U.S. passport, and a New York Times press badge that bore his name. While Renaud was initially thought to be covering the conflict for the NY Times, the paper clarified that he hadn’t been on assignment for the newspaper for some time.

“Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to the New York Times over the years. Though he had contributed to the Times in the past (most recently in 2015), he was not on assignment for any desk at the Times in Ukraine,” Cliff Levy, a deputy managing editor for the newspaper, said in a statement. “Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago.”

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Renaud had won a Peabody Award for his work alongside his brother, Craig, according to the website of their company, the Renaud Brothers. The two have worked on film and television projects covering a wide range of topics, including “the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, the fight for Mosul, extremism in Africa, cartel violence in Mexico, and the youth refugee crisis in Central America.”

Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser to President Joe Biden, said on March 13 that the Biden administration is trying to get more information about Renaud’s death and would respond with “appropriate consequences.”

“This is obviously shocking and horrifying, and I’ve just learned about it as I came onto air here, so I will be consulting with my colleagues, we'll be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,” he said in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”