Originally published 2022-06-23.
Maks Levin, one of Ukraine's best-known photojournalists, disappeared near Kyiv on 13 March 2022 while documenting the Russian invasion. His body was found on 1 April in woodland near the village of Huta-Mezhyhirska, about 30 kilometres north of the capital, after Russian forces withdrew from the region. In June 2022, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published the findings of its own field investigation and concluded that Levin and his companion, soldier Oleksiy Chernyshov, had been deliberately killed by Russian troops, not caught in crossfire.
This is what is known about Levin, what the investigators found, and why his case matters for press freedom and war-crimes accountability.
Who was Maks Levin?
Maksym "Maks" Levin was born on 7 July 1981 in Boyarka, just outside Kyiv. He trained as a computer systems engineer at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and worked in that field before turning to photography, his teenage ambition, in 2006.
He became a staff photographer for the Ukrainian news site LB.ua and worked with Reuters, the Associated Press, the BBC, Hromadske and others. His pictures appeared in publications such as Time and The Wall Street Journal, and he took on projects for UNICEF, the WHO and the OSCE. He covered the war in eastern Ukraine from 2014, survived encirclement at the Battle of Ilovaisk, and later made a documentary about it. In 2015 he received the Order "For Merits". He was married with four sons.
The last journey
In early March 2022, Russian forces were pushing towards Kyiv from the north and north-west, and the forests between Vyshhorod and the Kyiv Sea reservoir became a front line. Levin went there with his friend Chernyshov, a serviceman, to photograph the damage and the fighting. On 10 March he lost his drone in the area. On 13 March contact with both men was lost. A GPS tracker in their car later showed its last position in the woods.
When Russian troops retreated from the Kyiv region at the end of March, Ukrainian searchers reached the area. Levin's body was found on 1 April. Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office said at the time that he had been shot by Russian servicemen while unarmed and wearing clothing that identified him as press.
What the RSF investigation found
RSF sent a team to the site in late May and early June 2022, working with Ukrainian investigators and photographs taken when the bodies were discovered. Its main findings, published on 22 June 2022, were:
- The car had been burned out and carried 14 bullet holes.
- Levin's body showed three bullet impacts, one in the chest and two in the head, and no burn marks. A bullet was found buried in the soil where he lay, suggesting he was shot at close range while on the ground.
- Chernyshov's remains were found burned near the car; RSF believed he may have been burned alive.
- The surroundings included abandoned Russian positions, one still booby-trapped, with ration packs, cigarette packets and a fuel can nearby.
- Likely perpetrators: in June 2022 RSF pointed to Russia's 106th airborne division or a special forces unit, and asked Ukrainian agencies for more information. In March 2023 it published further evidence about which Russian soldiers were in the area.
RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said the evidence "clearly point[s] to an execution that may have been preceded by interrogation or even acts of torture."
A detail worth noting
RSF also reported that Levin was wearing a blue armband similar to those used by Ukrainian soldiers, and that he had at times shared drone footage of Russian positions with Ukrainian forces. RSF judged his drone work to be primarily journalistic. Under international humanitarian law, journalists are civilians, and even a captured combatant may not be executed.
Why the case matters
Levin was one of several media workers killed in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion. UNESCO's director-general condemned his killing within days, and the agency counted him as the sixth journalist killed in Ukraine in 2022. Press-freedom groups have since documented dozens of deaths of journalists and media workers in the war, both Ukrainian and foreign.
Deliberately killing a civilian, including a journalist, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Cases like Levin's are being documented by Ukrainian prosecutors, by the International Criminal Court, which opened an investigation into the situation in Ukraine in March 2022, and by NGOs such as RSF that gather evidence for possible future trials.
The United States also stepped up its involvement. On 21 June 2022, the day before RSF's findings were widely reported, US Attorney General Merrick Garland made an unannounced visit to Ukraine and announced a team to help investigate war crimes, saying there was "no place to hide" for those responsible. Older versions of this story presented his words as a reaction to the Levin report; they were made about Russian war crimes in general during that visit.
How he is remembered
Levin was posthumously awarded the Order for Courage. His funeral was held at St Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral in Kyiv, where Metropolitan Epiphanius called him one of the best photographers of modern Ukraine, and he was buried in his hometown of Boyarka. Colleagues remember him for photographs that showed ordinary people's lives in wartime with care and closeness, and for projects such as "Dads' Club", about fatherhood.
His death, and the investigation that followed, is a reminder of the risks local journalists take to document war, and of why independent, evidence-based investigation matters when the truth about such killings is contested.
Sources: Al Jazeera, 22 June 2022; Wikipedia: Maks Levin; Stars and Stripes, 21 June 2022; The Daily Beast (original reporting).
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