London – Ukrainian photographer Maks Levin, working for local website LB.ua and collaborating as a freelance writer for Reuters, was killed by Russian military forces, possibly after being tortured in the Ukrainian war.
The conclusion comes from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which is conducting an independent investigation into what happened after Levin disappeared on 13 March in the village of Moshchun, 20km north of Kiev, along with another professional accompanying him at work.
“They were executed in cold blood,” says the report, released Wednesday (22nd).
Photographer killed who wanted to take pictures of war in motion
Maks Levin, who died at the age of 40, was a veteran war photographer who had documented conflicts in various countries and was part of the Reuters agency team of contributors.
The body was only found on April 1, which makes it Sixth journalist killed in war in Ukraine until then. Now comes the total eight.
During its visit to Ukraine from May 24 to June 3, the RSF gathered “overwhelming” evidence against unidentified Russian soldiers in the death of Levin and his companion, Oleksiy Chernyshov.
With the outbreak of war in Eastern Europe, the photographer contacted a group of soldiers he had known since filming the conflict in Donbas in 2014 to accompany them in battle and record them.
Images of the Russian occupation were published in various international media outlets. It has also collaborated with other global media such as the BBC, TRT World and Associated Press.
“He wanted to tell about this war as closely as possible to those who fought and, above all, those who were subjected to it,” says the RSF in its report on the photographer killed in the war.
The French organization presented evidence of what was already stated in April by the prosecutor of the Vyshhorod district, where the body was found, in the report entitled “How the Ukrainian journalist Maks Levin was executed by Russian forces.”
“He was unarmed and was killed by two bullets by soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces.”
The NGO collected information, photographs, testimonies and material evidence obtained during the investigation conducted in Ukraine by Arnaud Froger, head of the RSF investigation office, and eventually French war photographer Patrick Chauvel, who had worked with Levin in Donbas. February.
Accompanied by Ukrainian security forces, the duo managed to find the crime scene and the charred and abandoned Levin’s Ford Maverick model car in the middle of the forest near the village where their bodies were found.
“The RSF found several bullets at the scene, along with the identification papers of Chernyshov, who was with Levin, and detected 14 bullet marks in his car.
Several items with possible DNA traces confirming the presence of Russian soldiers in the immediate vicinity of the place where Levin and Chernyshov were killed were also identified by the RSF, and some were taken away.
In the final phase of the RSF-initiated search, metal detectors found a bullet that hit Levin.”
As a result, it turned out that his friend, a photographer and soldier, was killed by Russian army soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian war, possibly after being interrogated and even tortured.
read it too
From the newsroom to the front: the stories of journalists exchanging news for the war in Ukraine
The document also points to two hypotheses regarding the death of the Ukrainian photographer and his friend. You can find the full report here. connection.
“These two scenarios offer possible ways to reconstruct the sequence of events and determine exactly what happened. We hope that one day they will lead to the identification of those responsible for this double murder,” the NGO says.
Christophe Deloire, the general secretary of the RSF, reaffirms that the evidence of the Ukrainian photographer’s death in the war points to an execution that may have preceded interrogation and even acts of torture.
“In the context of a war heavily marked by propaganda and Kremlin censorship, Maks Levin and his friend paid with their lives for their struggle for reliable information.
We owe them the truth. And we will fight to determine and find out who executed them.”
During the visit to Ukraine, the RSF team met with the Deputy Prosecutor General of the warring country, the head of the media crimes investigation department and the head of the Kyiv regional prosecutor’s office.
“During this call, RSF handed over a flash drive containing nine evidence collected at the site and several dozen crime scene photos taken by Patrick Chauvel.”
The war in Ukraine has already killed eight journalists covering the conflict for vehicles in Russia, the USA, Lithuania and France.
The most recent media victim was Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, a French cameraman working for the BFM TV news station.
He was killed by shrapnel from a projectile fired by Russian forces while following a Ukrainian evacuation operation in the Severodonetsk region on May 30.
Read more
source: Noticias
[author_name]
