Photographer Mstyslav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka receive the top Ukrainian journalism prize for reports from besieged Mariupol

Photojournalists Mstyslav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka received this yearʼs the Georgy Gongadze Prize for their reports from the blockade of Mariupol. They were there at the beginning of the invasion and covered the events and shelling of the city for more than two weeks.

Media Detector reports about this.

"Their visual testimonies make us and the whole world shocked to witness the events of todayʼs war, its horrors and exploits. You canʼt stay away, forget those scenes, these eyes, these people. These materials are evidence of the meanness and insidiousness of the aggressor. At the same time, it is evidence of the tragedy of all mankind in the war,” said Oleksandr Savruk, dean of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, during the award ceremony.

Mstyslav Chernov is an Associated Press journalist, photographer, military correspondent, and president of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers. Yevhen Maloletka is a photojournalist. He began his career as a photographer in 2009. As a freelancer, he has worked with the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, and Babel as well.

In particular, journalists were able to capture in photos and video the moment of the Russian air strike on the maternity hospital in Mariupol.

In addition to it, a special award was given posthumously to photographer Max Levin, who disappeared near Kyiv in March, and his body was found after deoccupation of Kyiv Oblast.