Kramatorsk, Bucha: AFP sets the agenda on breaking news in Ukraine

Agence France-Presse was the first international agency on the scene in Kramatorsk to cover the attack on the train station that killed more than 50 people on Friday 8 April.

AFP photo, video and text journalists were the only agency reporters providing images and testimony during the first few hours, documenting the horror at the station.

“A policeman moved between the debris, picking up phones and putting them in a box, one of them ringing out incessantly”, recounted AFP reporter Herve Bar in his powerful scene piece. Video journalist Maryke Vermaak and photographers Fadel Senna and Anatolii Stepanov filed rare independent images immediately picked up by major international media.

Photographer Anatolii Stepanov is based in Kramatorsk. The rest of this experienced multimedia team has been based there for several days after working in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Herve Bar has been sent on a special assignment from Bogota, where he heads the bureau. Maryke Vermaak is based in New Delhi and Fadel Senna in Rabat.

By harnessing our broad international network to cover the war in Ukraine, now nearing its seventh week, AFP now has a team of around 30 people in Ukraine, a mix of special correspondents, experienced local staff and critical logistics personnel.

This network also enabled AFP to be the first to break the news on April 2 of the mass killings in Bucha, our news alert on at least 20 bodies lining a street in the town setting the agenda for the news cycle. The scene piece from our The Hague bureau chief Danny Kemp, photos from Ronaldo Schemidt (Jerusalem), and video from Nicolas Garcia (Montevideo) were seen around the world, and sparked international condemnation.

AFP has mobilised its entire reporting and editing network to cover the war in Ukraine, including a specialised reporting unit spread across Warsaw and Paris.

---AFP