Within the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tens of millions of Ukrainians have been displaced in one of many quickest mass actions of individuals in latest historical past. Prepare stations turned shelters. Theaters turned support facilities. Borders turned ready rooms for grief. Journalists moved in the wrong way, towards uncertainty, as a result of with out witnesses, displacement turns into statistics and warfare turns into abstraction.
I used to be considered one of them, reporting with my colleague and pal, Brent Renaud.
On March 13, 2022, we crossed what remained of a destroyed bridge into Irpin, a suburb north of Kyiv the place households have been fleeing Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troopers helped aged folks, kids and the wounded transfer throughout twisted concrete and rebar, carrying what little that they had managed to save lots of. Canines wandered between deserted vehicles. The sound of artillery echoed within the distance — a rhythm that shortly turns into the background noise of warfare.
As seasoned journalists, Brent and I had spent latest years documenting displacement — migrants crossing rivers in Central America, refugees shifting by way of camps in Greece, households uprooted by hurricanes and battle throughout the Americas. Motion had change into the story we adopted. In Ukraine, that motion felt quicker, heavier, irreversible.
Minutes after accepting a experience from an area driver who supplied to take us towards an evacuation level, gunfire erupted. I bear in mind the sound of glass breaking, bullets tearing by way of steel, the intuition to press my face to the ground of the automobile. When the automobile stopped, Brent was slumped beside the driving force, bleeding from his neck. I attempted to cease the bleeding with my palms. He was already unconscious.
That was the second I finished being solely an observer.
Brent believed deeply within the duty of journalists to doc historical past and bear witness. We met as fellows at Harvard and constructed a friendship grounded in work that sought to make distant struggling seen with out spectacle. We drove towards disasters as an alternative of away from them — not out of bravery, however out of a shared conviction that the general public has a proper to firsthand accounts, to correct details about occasions that form their lives and futures.
4 years in the past, he turned the primary American journalist killed in Ukraine after the invasion.
When journalists are killed for reporting the information, we should struggle to make sure fact doesn’t change into a casualty too. Focusing solely on particular person loss dangers obscuring the bigger fact. Brent’s dying was not an remoted tragedy.
Throughout conflicts around the globe, journalists proceed to be injured, detained and killed at alarming charges. A report printed by the Committee to Shield Journalists not too long ago discovered that 2025 was the deadliest yr on file for the press, with 129 journalists and media staff killed worldwide. For the reason that begin of the Russia-Ukraine warfare and Brent’s killing, greater than 400 journalists and media staff have been killed worldwide.
Journalists are sometimes described as impartial observers, however warfare makes that concept fragile. The road between documenting violence and turning into a part of it may disappear in seconds. Protecting vests, press markings and expertise don’t assure security. What they assure is publicity.
Within the months after the assault, as I recovered from a number of surgical procedures, I struggled with a query acquainted to many survivors: why him and never me? Survivor’s guilt isn’t dramatic. It’s repetitive. It lives in small particulars — a seat in a automobile, a choice made shortly, a reminiscence that replays with out decision.
In the course of the invasion of Ukraine, the world noticed photos of households crossing destroyed bridges, mass graves uncovered and cities lowered to rubble. These photos formed public understanding, coverage debates and humanitarian response. They existed as a result of a journalist stood shut sufficient to file them.
The price of that proximity is usually invisible.
I bear in mind the evacuation practice leaving Kyiv days after the assault. I noticed then that I used to be not behind the digicam. I used to be one other particular person being evacuated, one other physique moved by battle. Warfare rearranges roles with out warning.
I usually return to the final moments earlier than the assault, the atypical dialog within the automobile, the belief that we might end the day and proceed working. Warfare interrupts time with out warning. What stays are fragments: a seat, a sound, the burden of a digicam, the reminiscence of a pal whose life was outlined by listening to others.
Within the years since, making an attempt to make sense of that day turned a part of the work itself. Brent’s life and dying at the moment are the topic of the documentary “Armed Solely With a Digital camera,” which I produced. Making the movie meant confronting painful photos and reminiscences, however we intentionally selected to not look away. We didn’t soften the cruelty of warfare or conceal the fact of Brent’s dying, as a result of the violence journalists witness — and generally endure — is exactly what the world is usually shielded from. Bearing witness requires honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.
At present, U.S.-based journalists are dealing with circumstances that might at some point mirror the warfare zones we’ve coated overseas. On the identical time, the erosion of belief within the press has coincided with a rising tolerance for assaults on those that doc warfare.
I nonetheless return to the locations the place motion defines folks’s lives, borders, evacuation routes, communities dwelling with uncertainty, not as a result of the questions have solutions, however as a result of the act of documenting resists disappearance. Brent understood this instinctively. The work was by no means about recognition; it was about presence.
Journalism doesn’t cease violence. Nevertheless it makes denial more durable. It creates a file that can’t be simply erased.
That’s the duty Brent carried. It’s the one many journalists proceed to hold now, armed solely with a digicam and the idea that the reality issues.
Juan Arredondo is a photojournalist and producer of “Armed Solely With a Digital camera: The Life and Dying of Brent Renaud.”
