Under the Geneva Conventions, journalists working in conflict zones are considered civilians, which means that targeted attacks against them constitute war crimes. Earlier this month, a team of reporters from Britain’s Sky News were the subject of a suspected Russian ambush although they identify themselves several times. Correspondent Stuart Ramsay was shot and wounded and the crew was later evacuated to the UK.
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, on Sunday condemned Renaud’s murder and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of American journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. This kind of attack is totally unacceptable and constitutes a violation of international law,” Martinez de la Serna said in a statement. statement. “Russian forces in Ukraine must immediately end all violence against journalists and other civilians, and whoever killed Renaud must be held to account.
In 2015, Renaud and his brother, Craig, won a Peabody Award for their documentary Vice News Last Chance Raisedwhich has been praised for its “uncompromising look at school violence and its compassionate portrayal” of struggling public school students with severe emotional disturbances.
Renaud, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, was also named a 2019 Nieman Fellow by Harvard University. Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, said the Nieman community was saddened to learn of his death. “Our Nieman Fellow Brent Renaud was gifted and kind, and his work was imbued with humanity,” she said. wrote on Twitter.
The Renaud brothers’ work has often taken them to dangerous places, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as cartel violence in Mexico and extremism in North Africa.
Sunday was yet another bloody day in Russia’s deadly war as forces advanced on the beleaguered southern city of Mariupol, hitting it with a series of bomb attacks. At the start of the week, a the city’s maternity ward was destroyed by a Russian strike.
In one of the deadliest attacks of the war so far, an airstrike against a military training base in Yavoriv in western Ukraine killed 35 people and injured dozens more, according to civil servants. The base was about 10 miles from the border with Poland, which is a member of NATO.
Sullivan warned that any attack – even accidental – that hits the territory of a NATO member would be met with a strong response by member countries.
“The president has repeatedly made it clear that the United States will work with our allies to defend every square inch of NATO territory, and that means every square inch,” he told CBS. “And if there is a military attack on NATO territory, that would trigger the invocation of Article 5, and we would call upon the full force of the NATO alliance to respond to it.”
Chris Miller contributed reporting for this story from Ukraine.