Soldier, journalist, communications officer Oleksandr Bondarenko killed in action
Soldier, journalist, and communications officer, Oleksandr Bondarenko, was killed in battle with the Russian invaders. His colleagues reported this on social media.
Oleksandr's last Facebook post is dated September 11, 2022, and reads: "Somewhere in the woods near Kharkiv. We advance further."
In his comment to IMI, the head of the UAF Liaison Department, Colonel Bohdan Senyk, said that they were currently looking for the exact spot where Oleksandr Bondarenko died.
According to IMI, Oleksandr Bondarenko is the 55th media worker to die as a result of Russia's aggression.
"Babel" published a short biography of the journalist.
Oleksandr Bondarenko is a graduate of the Luhansk National University; he was a Ukrainian Philology major. After graduation, he worked on Luhansk cable TV. Later, he moved to Kyiv.
Oleksandr worked at the Hromadske Radio and the Pershyi Natsionalnyi TV channel. In late 2005, he represented the channel in the "One Day as a Soldier" – a military contest for journalists. It was designed by the government wanted to promote service in the army.
From 2007 to 2011, he worked at the Ukrainian BBC service, producing political news, writing notes and taking interviews. He also worked at the channels UBR and Ukraina (made news for the programs "Podiyi" and "Podiyi Tyzhnia").
For five months, from January to May 2015, he worked as the editor-in-chief of the ICTV investigative program "Insider".
He worked as a communications officer at PlusOne, becoming head of special projects at the company's strategic communications and reputation management agency RMA (Reputation Management Agency) in 2018. That yest, he and a group of authors published the book "Strategic Communications Amdist Hybrid Warfare: Perspectives from a Volunteer to a Researcher."
In early 2020, Bondarenko wrote a blog post "Three anti-crisis communications rules for President Zelensky". The post mentioned the president's main communication mistakes after the crash of a Ukrainian plane in Iran. The advice for the future was simple: Zelensky should be honest, respond quickly, and keep the team prepared for force majeure.
In 2020, Bondarenko went to school again – this time to study marketing and project management at the Genesis IT School.
In the 2020 local elections, Bondarenko and his team accompanied the "Holos" party in Lviv.
Photo: screenshot from the video posted on Facebook by Olesia Korzhenevska
According to IMI, Oleksandr Bondarenko is the 55th media worker to die in Ukraine as a result of Russia's armed aggression. Nine of those died while reporting, 46 died as combatants or were killed by Russian shelling not while performing journalistic work.
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