When Maks Levin went missing on March 13, to recover a drone lost in the woods at the front, many of his friends and colleagues feared the worst. Weeks later he and Ukrainian serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov's bodies were found. An examination of the bodies and the crime scene by Reporters Without Borders was released today. They found that both had been executed and likely tortured first by Russian troops.

Source: Daily Beast

A well-known Ukrainian photojournalist was “executed in cold blood” by Russian forces when he tried to retrieve footage he’d shot shortly after the Feb. 24 invasion, an investigation has found.

Maks Levin, a photojournalist who freelanced for Reuters, the BBC, Associated Press and several Ukrainian news agencies, vanished in the early days of the war, just a day after his 2-year-old son’s birthday in mid-March. After frantic search efforts by family and friends, his body was found outside Kyiv in early April, along with that of Ukrainian serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov, a friend with whom Levin had been travelling.

Now, Reporters Without Borders has revealed that its investigators found “overwhelming” evidence of a straight-up execution at the scene in Moshchun, outside Kyiv. An investigation by the group published Wednesday said evidence suggested that Levin, who was wearing civilian clothing and a bulletproof vest labelled “PRESS” at the time of his death, was likely either ambushed by Russian forces and executed at point-blank range, or interrogated first by Russian troops who set Chernyshev on fire before executing both men “by shots to the head.”