Yevhen Maloletka, Mstyslav Chernov, and Maks Levin become journalists of the year according to UP
"Ukrainska Pravda" announced the winners of its own award for the third time. The editors choose the winners together with the Readers' Club in several traditional nominations. This year, Associated Press photojournalists Yevhen Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov, as well as photojournalist Maks Levin, who was a Hromadske videographer, became Journalists of the Year.
"This year, all the awards are, of course, about resilience and the fight for freedom. Everyone has a fight of their own. But all of them are for a common goal," the media website says.
As UP notes, Russian war crimes have long had specific images attached to them in the eyes of the whole world.
"The civilians shot in Bucha, the siege of Mariupol, the torture camps in Kharkiv oblast. These stories made the atrocities of the Russians into something more than words even for someone who lives hundreds of kilometers away from the war's epicenter. To a large extent, this was thanks to Ukrainian journalists, who have won numerous media awards all over the world for their commitment to their work," added the editorial team.
UP reminded that it was Yevhen Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov whose photos from Mariupol became one of the most famous illustrations of this war. In particular, they were the ones who filmed the maternity hospital which the occupiers had shelled ruthlessly.
Expecting a major invasion, Maloletka and Chernov arrived in the city on the night of February 23–24. And they stayed there during the shelling and the siege. They lived in a warehouse and a hospital. They hunted for phone connection under the shopping center and at a police station. They filmed the shelling and the people living without food and basic necessities.
Maks Levin is one of the most famous documentarists of the Ukrainian war since 2014. He dreamed of taking a photo that would stop the war. But he didn't have the time – on March 13, Levin was killed in Kyiv oblast, near Moschun village.
He was 40. Levin dreamed of becoming a photographer since he was 15 years old. And he made his dream come true right after completing the higher education he didn't want.
In early March, Maks was working in Kyiv oblast, where the fighting was going on. Among other things, he was filming the destroyed residential buildings of Borodyanka from the sky. His colleagues say that on March 10, he lost his drone. In three days, he went back to the woods to recover it. On the same day, around 11:23, the journalist went out of contact forever.
His body was only found on April 1. Reporters Without Borders later established that Russian soldiers had deliberately executed Levin, probably after interrogating and torturing him.
Volodymyr Zelensky posthumously awarded Levin with the Order "For Courage" of the 3rd degree.
As IMI reported, the world premiere of the movie "20 Days in Mariupol" will take place at the Sundance Film Festival next January in Park City, Utah.
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