In honor of Maks, a photographer we worked closely with in Ukraine since 2016.
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops streaming across Ukraine’s borders on 24 February, 2022, the Army of Ukraine and the Territorial Defense Forces rushed to meet them head-on.
News photographers, both Ukrainian and foreign, went with them. A very few of them traveled farther and crept up closer to the the front lines. One of those was Maks Levin.
The last anyone heard from Maks was on 13 March, 2022. On that day, Maks and another journalist, Oleksiy Chernyshov, went missing near the village of Huta-Mezhyriska. Maks’ body was found on 1 April. The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office reported that he had been shot twice with small arms fire. No trace has been found of Oleksiy.
Maks in schools
Whether it was visiting schools for Centropa in Irpin, Priluki or Kyiv, or traveling with our Ukrainian teachers to Mannheim, Maks captured the moment, the spirit, and the emotion of those he photographed.
Maks at War
When the war began, we knew Maks would head straight for the front lines and we sent money twice to support him.
On 7 March Maks wrote, “Thanks. Just don’t make me sound like a hero.” But he was. Here is a sampling of the pictures he sent us.
