A report by Reporters Without Borders found Levin and a friend were possibly tortured before being shot. His girlfriend told VICE World News she wants Russia “to pay for what they’ve done.”
A report by Reporters Without Borders found Levin and a friend were possibly tortured before being shot. His girlfriend told VICE World News she wants Russia “to pay for what they’ve done.”
Lyseiko said that Levin took his personal car and went to photograph hostilities on March 13. He left his car near the village of Huta Mezhyhirska and went to the village of Moshchun. A text message was sent from his phone at 11:23 a.m., and after that he was not heard from again. Later, it was reported that hostilities started within the area where Levin was planning to work. It is presumed that he could have been wounded or taken prisoner by Russian troops.
This commitment to a nuanced moral high ground has its costs. In Levin’s eyes, “I can say that we are losing the information war to Russia, because we give more silence and are less united about our informational strategy. Meanwhile, Russian reporters work for propaganda commissioned by their government. In other words, these are not times to wait for truth to simply weigh down the scales. Things won’t work out just because that is how ‘it’s supposed to be.’ Remember, the informational war is no less dirty than the one going in the fields. We have to be less salient, less afraid about telling truth.”
