Christophe Deloire, the head of Reporters Without Borders for the last 12 years, has died at the age of 53 from complications of brain cancer. Deloire fought tirelessly to defend press freedom and persecuted journalists. A year ago, he appeared on Democracy Now!, where we asked him about Evan Gershkovich.

Christophe Deloire: “Evan is clearly a Russian state hostage, a sort of institutional hostage. … We know how Putin succeeded in the past decade — he finalized it right after the beginning of the war — how he succeeded to extinguish, to resuppress pluralism, independent journalism, to provoke an extinction in his own country.”

Click here to see our full interview with Christophe Deloire.