Brent Renaud, an award-winning US filmmaker and former contributor to The New York Times, was fatally shot by Russian forces in Irpin, close to Kyiv, according to officials in Ukraine.

The Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, working alongside his brother Craig as the Renaud Brothers, also produced films for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS and Vice News, among others.

On 13 March, Russian forces opened fire on a car with foreign journalists inside near Irpin, targeted with intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Another reporter was also injured, according to Kyiv region police chief Andrey Nebitov. Authorities also shared a photograph of what appeared to be Brent Renaud’s press credentials issued by The New York Times. He was not on assignment with the publication at the time.

“We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death. Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to The New York Times over the years,” a spokesperson for the publication said in a statement to The Independent.

“Though he had contributed to The Times in the past (most recently in 2015), he was not on assignment for any desk at The Times in Ukraine. Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago,” according to the statement.

A US reporter said in a video shared by Ukraine’s Parliament that Russian forces near a checkpoint opened fire on a car with foreign journalists inside as they were on the way to film people fleeing Russia’s assault.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said in a statement that Brent Renaud “paid with his life for attempting to expose the insidiousness, cruelty and ruthlessness of the aggressor”.

A Ukranian police officer told a PBS correspondent to “tell America, tell the world, what they did to a journalist”.

Brent Renaud had reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and across the US and elsewhere, covering drug cartel violence in Mexico, political turmoil in Egypt, and schools and drug use in America. The 2014 series Last Chance High, revealing the violence and emotional struggles inside Chicago schools, won a Peabody Award.

The brothers’ work for The New York Times spanned Central American migration, the aftermath from the 2010 Haiti earthquake and drug violence in Mexico.

The brothers grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Brent Renaud was also among the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University’s 2019 fellows.

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