Some three weeks after he disappeared, the body of Ukrainian photojournalist and documentary film maker Max Levin was found in the Ukrainian village of Guta Mezhyhirska with two gunshot wounds inflicted by Russian invaders. Levin, 40, had worked for such organizations as Reuters, TIME, BBC and the Associated Press, and was photographing things the Russians didn't approve of. Levin is the latest journalist to be killed by Russian forces in their indiscriminate assault on Ukraine. Among the others were Brent Renaud, a documentary maker, Oksana Baulina, an independent Russian journalist, and Pierre Zakrzewski, a cameraman working for Fox with Oleksandra Kuvshynova, both killed in the same attack. In some of these cases, the "PRESS" designation on their body armor may have enticed the Russians to violence, given the lies that they've been fed about spreading slander against the Kremlin.
There were also reports last month that reporters were being hunted by Russian troops in the besieged city of Mariupol, including two Associated Press journalists:
"Before fleeing, Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka were the last two international journalists in the port city, which has been barraged by Russian forces since they invaded in late February. Dozens of people have been left dead, injured, or missing in Mariupol, a focal point of Russia's assault.
"The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in," Chernov, an AP videographer who spent 20 days in Mariupol, said in a first-person account of his experience covering the war alongside Maloletka, a photographer." (our emphasis)
The Russians are eager to cover up their war criminality in Ukraine, and one way to do that is eliminating the medium by which the world learns of them. Although the cost is high, that can't be allowed, and the journalists they've killed would be the first to agree.
