(CNN) — Award-winning American journalist Brent Renaud was killed by Russian forces in Irpin, Ukraine, Kyiv region police reported on social media on Sunday. Kyiv police said another American journalist was wounded by Russian troops.
In a tweet, police in the Kyiv region named the 50-year-old American journalist who was killed as Brent Renaud. Police released a photo of his body and his US passport as evidence, as well as a photo of a New York Times press badge bearing Brent Renaud’s name.
An aide to Ukraine’s Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said in a statement that Renaud “paid with his life for attempting to expose the insidiousness, cruelty and ruthlessness of the aggressor,” according to a report by The New York Times.
CNN has not been able to verify which media outlet the American journalists were working for in Ukraine.
The New York Times said in a statement Sunday: “We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Brent Renaud. Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to The New York Times for years. Although he had contributed to The Times in the past ( most recently in 2015), he was not on assignment for any Times desk in Ukraine. Early reports that he worked for The Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for assignment many years ago.”
A little more context: The northern Ukrainian city of Irpin, outside Kyiv, has been the scene of major Russian bombing in recent days and has suffered extensive damage, the Kyiv regional government said Friday.
Brent Renaud was a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and journalist who lived and worked in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas. according to his biography on the Renaud brothers’ website.
Along with his brother Craig, Renaud spent years “telling real humanist stories from world hot spots,” including projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Egypt and Libya, according to his website biography. Brent Renaud was a fellow Nieman the Harvard and 2019.
A post on the Renaud brothers’ Facebook page, dated March 8, urged readers to follow their coverage of the Ukraine war.