The mother of a Fox News cameraman killed in Ukraine has told of living in constant fear when he was out working in war zones around the world—but said it had been “his life... his choice.”
Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, was killed Tuesday along with a young Ukrainian producer, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, in a Russian artillery attack on the northeastern village of Gorenka. A Fox News correspondent, Benjamin Hall, was seriously injured.
With his curly hair and extravagant mustache, Zakrzewski was a recognizable and very popular figure among the close-knit tribe of international war correspondents, having covered numerous conflicts for Fox and Sky News in the U.K. as far back as the Iraq War.
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He was also known for his kindness, doing his best, for example, to help Afghan colleagues escape after the Taliban takeover of the country last year.
As colleagues paid tribute on Wednesday to Zakrzewski, a married father of three, his mother, Marie-Ange, described the moment she heard the news she had “always dreaded” in a phone call from his wife, Michelle, who lives in London.
“It was really his life. It was his choice. He was extremely good at it,” she told the Irish Examiner. “I was always worried, what else can you do? He escaped so many, so many problems and so many things, that we thought once more he will get away."
Zakrzewski was born in Paris but moved to Dublin as a baby with his French mother and Polish father, who brought up six children in the Irish capital. According to his mother, he considered himself “100 percent Irish.”
“With his mustache, he used to go up to people, wherever, in Israel, saying 'I am Irish. I am Pierre Zakrzewski, so let me through’. And he would always get through,” she said. “He was Pierre Zakrzewski, he was pure Irish.”
The deaths of Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova bring to at least three the number of journalists known to have been killed since Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine three weeks ago. Brent Renaud, a prize-winning American filmmaker documenting the country’s refugee crisis, was shot dead by Russian soldiers in Irpin, near Kyiv, on Sunday.
In a message to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had sent his condolences, Renaud’s family said: “We stand with you and the people of Ukraine.”
The nature of the conflict as it evolves, with no clear front lines and with Ukrainian defenders relying on hit-and-run tactics to undermine and destroy Russian forces, appears to have made the Ukraine conflict a particularly dangerous one for journalists to cover—even for the most experienced correspondents and cameramen.
That point was made by the Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who paid tribute to the cameraman on a visit to Washington, D.C. “It's an appalling killing, illustrating again the indiscriminate and barbaric nature of the Russian attack on the citizens of Ukraine, and also brings a very sharp focus on the enormous risks that journalists are taking, in terms of shining a light on this barbaric war,” he said.
Friends and colleagues joined in the tributes on social media. “Pierre was as good as they come,” said the Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst. “Selfless. Brave. Passionate.”
CNN’s chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, described in an emotional Instagram post how she had first worked with Zakrzewski in Gaza in 2006.
“I was 26 and knew almost nothing about anything. He was deeply experienced, full of grace and humour and kindness. I watched the way he worked. With empathy, with professionalism, with heart.
“In almost every conflict or crisis I have covered in the 16 years since, I have become accustomed to seeing Pierre, in the hotel lobby, on the frontline. His shock of curls and bushy moustache, his endless positivity, the ever present fanny pack... Two days ago we were deliberately bumping our chairs against each other at breakfast and laughing at our childishness. Today he is gone.”
Ward, who began her career at Fox News, said she had “sadly” never met Kuvshynova, but her death was equally devastating. “I cannot conceive of the courage and poise it takes to do this job when it is your country at war, your friends being killed and displaced, your family’s lives at risk.”
