Evgeniy Maloletka
Evgeniy Maloletka was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with ‘Why? Why? Why?’ Ukraine’s Mariupol descends into despair.
Maloletka is a Ukrainian war photographer, journalist and filmmaker, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014. He has also covered the Euromaidan Revolution, the protests in Belarus, the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine. He took the iconic photograph of a wounded pregnant woman carried out on a stretcher after a maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed. The photograph was used by news organizations around the world. His work during the siege of Mariupol has been recognized with the Knight International Journalism Award, the Visa d’or News Award, the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie and a George Polk Award for War Reporting, among others. Maloletka and his colleague, Mstyslav Chernov, were the last international journalists in Mariupol when Russian troops attacked. Driving a van with windows blown out by explosions, snatching a bit of battery power where they can to file videos and photos, and checking in during rare moments when there was enough of a network signal, the two journalists were the world’s only eyes on a city that was my to the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Elena Kostyuchenko
Elena Kostyuchenko was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with Mykolaiv.
Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, till the newspaper was shut down by Russian authorities in April 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to write about the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. She covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the second day of the war. She is also the author of two collections, Unwanted on Probation and It’s Us Who Will Live Here. Her work was acknowledged with multiple awards including European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award-Free Press of Eastern Europe, and Paul Klebnikov Prize.