Oleksandr Bondarenko, a former journalist for BBC News Ukraine, was killed while performing his job on the front lines in Ukraine.
At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, he offered his services as a communications specialist and media trainer before enlisting in the military to help defend Ukraine’s borders.
It is unknown exactly how he was killed in action.
Only the statement “death caught up with him in a battle” was made by close pals.
Friends, old BBC coworkers, and the larger media community in Ukraine paid tribute to a gifted journalist who later became a prosperous communications specialist.
Bondarenko, sometimes known as Sasha or Sashko, is a native of the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk.
From 2007 to 2011, he was a news reporter, presenter, and editor for radio shows that were broadcast from Kyiv for the BBC’s Ukrainian Service. He left the BBC to pursue employment with other media companies.
At the outset of the conflict, he oversaw special initiatives for the top Ukrainian communications firm RMA, whose personnel praised his wit, voice, and intellect.
He was one of many thousands of Ukrainians from all walks of life who quit their civilian employment to fight the Russian invasion.
Members of one of Ukraine’s leading rock bands, Antytila, who joined the military as doctors, as well as broadcasters Pavlo Kazarin and Yurii Matsarskyi, were among the well-known Ukrainians who recruited.
Additionally, a number of journalists who were covering the conflict have perished. This week, while working with an Italian reporter, a Ukrainian fixer was killed when they came under fire close to the southern city of Kherson.
Sasha Bondarenko was recognised by RMA as a man who volunteered from day one and was described as “a human with a will of steel.” a person with the most obvious motives. A person having the greatest music collection.
The BBC was incredibly fortunate to have him on the Kyiv team, according to Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski, the former head of the BBC’s Ukrainian Service: “It was always fresh challenges with this wonderful individual. including the most valiant one who bravely defended his nation.”
Following his graduation from the teacher-training college in Luhansk, Bondarenko began his journalism career at a regional radio station in the country’s east before moving on to prominent Ukrainian TV networks and eventually the BBC’s Ukrainian Service.
The editor-in-chief of BBC Ukraine, Marta Shokalo, remarked, “I look at our photos together and can’t stop crying even though I can only remember our carefree days in the Kyiv office and how we laughed together.”
He eventually became a TV reporter, covering the large-scale anti-government demonstrations on the Maidan in Kyiv in 2013–14 and afterwards Russia’s invasion of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.
His understanding of the difficulties of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia was regarded as particularly relevant because he was an eastern Ukrainian native.
He accomplished a lifelong goal of swimming the Bosphorus because he is an avid athlete. His most recent Facebook post with the caption, “Somewhere in the Kharkiv woods.”
