Two fates

Andrey Stenin and Stephen Joel Sotloff ... Two more journalists were brought to the altar of war

Andrey Stenin 12/22/1980–06.08.2014	Stephen Sotloff 05/11/1983–02.09.2014

The connection with the 33-year-old photo correspondent of Russia Today Andrei Stenin, who went on a business trip to the east of Ukraine, disappeared back in August, but only on September 3 it was possible to find out: Stenin died on August 6 in the vicinity of the Snezhnoye city, not far from Donetsk. The Investigative Committee (SK) of Russia said that the journalist died under artillery fire, accompanying the car column of refugees. The fact of his death has already been confirmed by the examination.

SK assigned the death of a journalist to the National Guard and the Army of Ukraine. In turn, official Kyiv said: the attacks on the column of refugees could be made by units of the self -proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

Behind Andrey is a solid professional biography. He wrote for Rossiy newspaper and Gazeta.ru, but then decided to take a photo - he worked freely for Kommersant, Reuters, Associated Press and France Press. Twice was nominated for the Silver Camera Award.

Ukraine was not the first "hot point" of the journalist. Stenin made reports from Libya and Syria, shot clashes on Taxim Square in Istanbul and mass demonstrations in Egypt. His last post on the personal page on Facebook is a request for friends to purchase a photochealendar for authorship of the Associated Press Thonger and the Novye Gazeta photojet of Evgeny Feldman, the profit from which would be supported by convicts in the “swamp business”.

On September 2, an American journalist, 31-year-old Stephen Sotloff, was killed: he was executed by the militants of the Islamic State (IG), presumably in Iraq. Stephen Joel Sotloff was a freelancer, wrote for Time and Foreign Policy, appeared on CNN and Fox News television channels. Sotloff perfectly mastered the Arabic language, made reports from Egypt, Turkey, Libya and Bahrain. He was captured by the Islamists by the same time from the Syrian city of Aleppo on August 4, 2013.

On a widespread IG video with a scene of execution, Stephen is on his knees with a chopped head, dressed, like executed two weeks earlier, journalist James Fouley, in orange jellaba - like those that prisoners in Guantanamo.

Before the execution, Stephen, like Fowley, turned to Barack Obama with the words of condemning American bombing in Iraq. A minute later he was beheaded.

Now the IS militants promise to kill another journalist, this time - Briton David Heine.

The war does not choose whether the journalist works for a state propaganda machine or on an independent media - she collects her terrible harvest. Journalists go to war, because their profession is to tell people about how the war kills. Journalists do not have the right to pick up weapons - their tools - a notebook, pen, camera, phone. And the journalist always dying in the war by the very fact of his death says what remains outside the report: “People, think the way!”

Photo: Mikhail Postuev/ITAR-TASS/AP Photo, Mazen Mahdi/EPA