Journalists in Ukraine: dying to inform

After more than a month of occupation, Russian troops withdrew from settlements north of kyiv. They leave behind a desolate landscape, ruins, armor twisted by fire and hundreds of waxen corpses. In Boutcha, the Ukrainian forces discovered the bodies of Russian soldiers abandoned by their comrades, but also civilians lying by the dozens in the streets, shot like dogs with a bullet in the head, sometimes with their hands tied behind their backs. They also discovered the corpses of women burned in a pile of tires on the side of the road. War crimes for which Moscow denies responsibility, but whose precise documentation, by journalists on the spot, will perhaps one day be used as evidence in court.

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In the age of alternative truths, when part of the public no longer believes anything other than its own suspicion, it has become easier to massacre civilians than to prove the reality of these crimes. Rarely have the testimonies of field journalists been more essential. The Russian forces know this and are targeting them. Since the start of the conflict, several reporters have been kidnapped, tortured, manhandled, forced to produce false testimonies. “They wanted to break me, trample me, show what will happen to every journalist: you will be crushed, you will be killed,” said Oleg Baturin, of the newspaper “Novy Den”, detained for eight days by Russian forces. A 32-year-old Ukrainian, a contributor to Radio France, was tortured for nine days. The 75-year-old father of journalist Svitlana Zaliztska was kidnapped by the Russian army on March 23 in Melitopol.

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Against his release, the Russians demand that the director of the city’s main news site come to them. More than twenty media employees, including sixteen foreigners, have been targeted by gunfire since the start of the invasion; a Sky News team miraculously escaped on February 28 in the suburbs of kyiv. Six other reporters were less fortunate: Evgueni Sakoun, cameraman for the local channel Kyiv Live TV, died on March 1 in the bombardment of the Ukrainian capital’s television tower. A few days later, Ukrainian journalist Viktor Doudar was killed in fighting near Mykolaiv. On March 13, the American Brent Renaud died in Irpin. The next day, the Franco-Irish Pierre Zakrzewski and the Ukrainian Oleksandra Kuvshynova, who worked for Fox News, were also killed. The death of Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius was announced on April 2. Arrested by Russian forces, he was found dead in Mariupol. The day before, the Ukrainian authorities declared that they had discovered in a village north of kyiv the body of Maks Levin, a 40-year-old Ukrainian photographer who disappeared on March 13. It is not known whether he was executed or killed in combat. We simply know that he was not carrying a weapon, that he wore a “press” sign on his waistcoat and that two bullets were found in his body.

By chance of war, I worked two days alongside Maks Levin. I know he wanted to be at the epicenter of the fighting to testify, to fight against propaganda, partisan denials, rumours. He took crazy risks to tell people’s stories. The day before the invasion, we slept in the same hut, without water, heating or electricity, on the front line in the trenches of Donbass, in the east of the country. We were expecting the Chemin des Dames in the night; but, at dawn, we woke up without receiving the money for our fear. Like the whole world, we were left speechless when we learned that the whole country was affected, except for this place where we were. I remember his pale face when he received the news: “I have to go get my children to safety! he breathed.

Maks Levin lived in kyiv, surrounded by four sons aged 2 to 12, his wife, Inna, a documentalist, and his parents. “He loved the mountains, nature, adventure, his job, which was really his life, and his children,” recalls his friend Alina Sheremeta, broken by emotion. The Ukrainian journalist recounts a joyful, mischievous man who loved cross roads: “Once, we were filming a report on caves together. Maks didn’t like mainstream journalism very much, so he was more interested in my panicked fear of bats than the interview with a local geologist. We only had pictures of me crawling past the bats! »

Levin had been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014 for Reuters, BBC, AP or Ukrainian media Hromadske. He has also created dozens of photo and video projects for major humanitarian organizations. He was an independent photographer and documentary filmmaker, recognized for the quality of his poetic and offbeat images. In the heart of the fighting, he avoided photographing blood and death. On February 23, he was working with us because there was a shortage of fixers, those guides and translators who help foreign reporters find their way around in a war zone. He had agreed to lug us, the photographer Patrick Chauvel and me, through the Donbass, this great volcano that we thought was about to explode. He took a thousand precautions to park his “sacred car”, an old Japanese car that did not justify his attachment, in places he hoped would be safe from mortar fire.

Maks couldn’t stand journalists who, having just arrived in a war zone, take selfies

We come from kyiv by train. He catches us at the station. He’s dirty, worn out. He hasn’t eaten, slept, or washed for several days. He works tirelessly. We devour a soup, he takes a shower in my room at the hotel, and we leave. Maks leads to the floor. He knows the road by heart. The front line is within firing range on certain exposed sections. Suddenly, Maks turns off the headlights. It drives for a few kilometres, then branches off onto a forest road. Maks was the kind of guy who walks through an inky night and finds his way there by sticking his head out of the car. Chauvel and I immediately liked this guy. His skinny cat look, his long blond surfer hair tanned by the waves, his silences… Maks had blue eyes and, in his lens, that slightly black thing, found in those who have seen the war too often. near. A kind of scanner that scans the bottom of your soul in seconds: is this person trustworthy? The answer induces the risks that we are ready to take for it, with it. Maks couldn’t stand journalists who, having just arrived in a war zone, take selfies. It was a good clue to guess who he was dealing with.

Maks had survived the famous Ilovaisk massacre, a bloody battle. In early August 2014, surrounded by Russian-backed separatists, Ukrainian troops reached an agreement allowing an evacuation. But on the agreed way out, the besieged are annihilated under a rain of fire. More than 1,000 soldiers are killed, according to a Ukrainian parliamentary inquiry. Maks put down his camera, abandoned his journalistic “neutrality” to carry corpses, and he managed to escape, driving his car under the bullets. “We are virgins of horror as we are of pleasure”, wrote Céline. Wounded, Maks left a part of him in Ilovaisk. Later, he founded the “After Ilovaisk” project (afterilovaisk.com) to preserve the memory of these events. He hated figures, balance sheets, but wanted to bear witness to the stories of these hundreds of massacred people of whom nothing is known.

He hated war, but soldiers were his “brothers”

I didn’t interact much with Maks. I remember a nocturnal walk in the freezing cold, 200 meters from the separatist trenches, and the geysers of steam coming out of its mouth. He murmured some indications on the places where it would be necessary to hide in the event of attack. While documenting myself, I discovered this interview given to a Ukrainian media: he said there that he never wanted to be a war reporter. When the conflict broke out in Georgia, many of his Russian and Ukrainian colleagues rushed there. Not him: “Why would I have risked my life there? These guys have been photographing the war for years, but nothing changes, the war is still there. “When it arises at home, in Ukraine, in the summer of 2014, Levin has no choice.

In a wildly beautiful nature, he meets beings full of life, of strength, who become his friends. Many have not seen any more summers after that one. “These people were real,” said Maks. Everything was true. This is what I discovered about the war. War hollows out man to the bone, scratches the fat from social relations, and in comparison, the normal world appears as a heap of pretense, hypocrisy. Maks hated war, but the soldiers were his “brothers”: “We all dream of taking the photo that will end the war”, he said without believing it anymore. Our paths parted on the evening of the invasion. He left to take his children to safety, before continuing to document the conflict. With Patrick Chauvel, we traced our route, keeping in touch with him, via WhatsApp, to make sure everything was fine.

On March 11, Maks and his friend Alexei Chernyshov, a former photographer turned soldier, went near Vichgorod, north of kyiv, where fighting was raging. They launched a drone to report on the destruction. But someone took control of it. The aircraft landed away from them, and Maks and Alexei left without asking for their rest. Two days later, alas, they decided to go back there to find the drone. They parked Maks’ car near the village of Gouta-Mejigirska and then left on foot. This morning of March 13, at 11:23 a.m., Maks messaged photographer Markiian Lyseiko. His last sign of life. Following his disappearance, Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), stated the obvious: “All parties to the conflict should ensure that the press can work safely and without fear of kidnapping. Other organizations have warned the Russian authorities. Listening to these polite admonitions, I had the impression of hearing haiku whispered in front of the ocean, under the roar of the storms. I prefer to remember this fatal sentence of Maks that all reporters should reread ten times before leaving: “The war of information is no less dirty than that which takes place on the ground. We need to be less afraid of telling the truth. »