While the world community cherishes illusions about Russian pacification, the Russian army intensifies attacks on Ukrainian cities. With the start of negotiations in which the United States brought Russia back into dialogue, the Kremlin is using this opportunity to spread its “truth” about the war.
“A large-scale information campaign has been launched against Russia.
On the basis of distorted facts, a false agenda is formed, which pushes our foreign partners to false conclusions and actions.
! At the same time, access to the Russian position is deliberately restricted.”
Russia uses international competitions, which are supposed to be based on high standards of ethics, impartiality and transparency, as platforms for the dissemination of war propaganda.
In particular, the international foundation World Press Photo, which holds the most prestigious annual prize in the field of photojournalism, has again become a tool in the Kremlin's information war this year.
After two years in a row, since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian photographers were among the winners, the Russians this year returned to a winning position, manipulating the topic of war in foreign territories.
In fact, Russian hybrid attacks began not yesterday and not three years ago. Since the beginning of the war in the Donbas, Russia has used every opportunity to spread narratives to the world, in particular to tell that Ukraine in the so-called “SVA zone” “massively violates the conventions”.
Valery Melnikov, an employee of the Russian media group MIA “Russia Today” for three years of work in Donbas, starting in 2014, titled photos for two multimedia projects. These projects were recognized by World Press Photo in 2017 and 2018.
The first place in the nomination “Long-term projects” in 2017 was won by his photo series “Black Days of Ukraine”.
This is a manipulative series of images depicting “local residents who have become the most important side of hostilities, whose lives have unexpectedly come to disaster.” The propaganda media Ukraina.ru, quoting Melnikov, calls residents of the occupied territory “people caught between two lights, residents involved in this catastrophe.”
The project was created “without political accents and names of countries”, that is, in a way that benefits the Kremlin authorities. This photo series is part of a disinformation campaign to convince the world that there is a civil war in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian authorities are committing the “genocide of Donbas”.
“All possible political and state accents, mentions of surnames and names of countries participating in the conflict are maximized from the work. This is done in order to maintain a clean image and atmosphere of escape from war; [...]” (“Ukraine.ru”).
Valery Melnikov cynically declares the unimportance of truth in war. After all, the truth is that Russia started this brutal war and itself dragged the inhabitants of the region into “this catastrophe”.
“In order for every viewer to understand that it does not matter from which side they shoot, on both sides there will be kilometers of graves and thousands of destroyed fates. At the same time, on each side there is a truth that does not really exist. “Where war begins, truth ends.” (“Ukraine.ru”).
The photos of the project show destroyed, smoky and fire-ravaged settlements in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Particularly noteworthy are the footage from Stanytsia Luhanska after the shelling. Several photos are devoted to the funeral of a five-year-old boy who died, according to Melnikov, from an air raid on the village.
For decades, such pictures and statements by Russian media propagandists convinced the civilized world that Ukraine is bombing its own population.
Other photos from Stanytsia Luhanska recorded local residents against the background of destroyed and burned houses.
In this photo only the results of the shelling, but Melnikov insisted that the shelling was from aircraft.
However “Ukrainian Truth”with reference to ATO presscenter reportedthat on July 2, 2014, militants shelled residential areas in Stanytsya Luhanska, accusing the Ukrainian Air Force of shelling. The Ukrainian military rejected accusations of shelling, explaining that on that day they conducted only artillery fire in the opposite direction. As the representative of the ATO press-center Alexey Dmitrashkivskyi told the Ukrainian publication, the network posted a video from the shelled village. The separatists claimed that airstrikes were carried out on the residential area, although the video showed that the shots were fired from artillery weapons.
According to Dmitrashkovsky, this fact was confirmed by eyewitnesses — local residents. They reported that the militants fired mortars in the direction of the checkpoint, but the strike came in a residential area of the settlement.
Later, at the briefing, the speaker of the National Security Council of Ukraine Andriy Lysenko reported on the seizure by the Ukrainian military of the Grad installation, which shelled the settlement. This has been documented.
“Identified details from these shells, it was identified that it was from this installation that the shelling was carried out and there are approved combat tasks for our pilots, where it can be seen that Stanytsia was not a target,” Lysenko said. “The ATO participants did not have the task of firing in this direction. We have evidence, and it is in the law enforcement agencies,” he added,” he wrote. “Ukrainian Truth”.
“Detector Media”published Reactionto win the photo series “Black Days of Ukraine” in the international competition from the newspaper “Day”. The author of the article says that the materials of this project were posted on the site “Ukraina.ru” in the section “News “White Book”.
As the journalist notes, “White Book” is a collection of materials about human rights violations in Ukraine. Hostile media has been collecting and recording the facts of crimes against humanity in Ukraine since 2013 in order to attract the attention of the world community and international organizations.
“Black Days of Ukraine” — projectcreated in the framework of the hybrid war against Ukraine by an employee of a structure that international governments have repeatedly accused of carrying out Russian propaganda outside Russia, primarily in Europe,” he quotes “Detector Media”journalist of the newspaper “Day”.
This material contains a comment by photographer Viktor Marushchenko, who in 2015 participated in a roundtable on the selection criteria for photos for the World Press Photo contest. In his comment, Marushchenko called the contest pro-Russian and “a contest of extreme events designed for emotions.”
Another multimedia project of Valeriy Melnikov, awarded by World Press Photo in the next year, 2018 is the black and white project “Under the ground” (Digital Storytelling/Short Form), dedicated to the inhabitants of the destroyed village of Shakhta near Donetsk, who, as the author noted, have been hiding in the basement for more than two years the local school during the shelling.
The photojournalist of the propaganda media with footage from the occupied Donetsk region won the World Press Photo for two years in a row. Russia Today itself received international recognition for the skill of its photocorrespondents for three years in a row, as reported by Ukraina.ru.
“This award is a great responsibility for the journalist, as his work becomes known all over the world. It is important what you want to say with your work,” declares “Ukraina.ru”.
It should be noted that MIA “Russia Today” is a state media company, which includes, in particular, RIA Novosti, the international news agency Sputnik and the portal “Ukraina.ru”. The media company is run by Dmitry Kiselov, and the editor-in-chief is Margarita Simonyan — both leading Russian propagandists.
Speaking about the difficult work in the Donbas, Melnikov noted that the journalist of our time simply cannot remain impartial.
“Of course, there are journalistic standards and ethics, the notion that a journalist should be above the fray, but that's not always possible. In modern warfare, the journalist is like a red rag: he has ceased to be a neutral figure.” (“Lenta.ru”).
However, the victories of the Russian photojournalist did not end there. World Press Photo 2021 was also a winner for Melnikov. This time the victory was brought to him by photos from another war. The photo series “Paradise Lost” about the war in Nagorno-Karabakh won in the category “Top News”. This time Melnikov “filmed the suffering of Armenians forced to leave their homes because of defeat in the war.”
In an interview with the publication “Lenta.ru” Melnikov spoke about the war in Karabakh, drawing parallels with the Donbas. He emphasized narratives convenient for the Kremlin authorities, omitting the fact of Russian interference in the affairs of foreign countries and support for separatist movements.
“In one village, Armenians told that during the Soviet era, the Armenian and Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh lived intermixed in their settlement. One of them showed the house where his Azerbaijani friend lived before the first war and they were best friends. He had to leave, but they remained friends and kept in touch because they had nothing to share.
This distinguished the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and Donbas, where there was a purely territorial conflict. The ethnic factor was not there and is not there. And the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, although it goes beyond the territory, but the struggle between nations is literally not for life, but for death. Therefore, no one sees the possibility of reconciliation, do not ask whom.” (“Lenta.ru”).
The Kremlin has been actively using the confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan to advance its interests in the South Caucasus since the beginning of the 20th century.
In the fall of 2020, the Second Karabakh War began, which lasted 44 days. The Azerbaijani army has regained much of the territory that had been controlled by Armenian forces since 1994. This was thanks to the support of Turkey and the non-interference of Russia, which acted as a kind of moderator in the war.
A trilateral agreement was signed, according to which Armenian forces left the territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, instead Russia entered there with its peacekeeping contingent.
“So, there are two types of “peacekeeping” from Russia.One of them is to stage a war near one's own borders for the formal purpose of protecting “fraternal peoples”. And another manifestation of Russian “peacekeeping” is to enter into someone else's internal conflict on someone's side, most often on the side of the government, significantly strengthening the ally. [...]” “Center for Countering Disinformation”.
Russian photojournalists, the exponents of the state ideology of the Russian Federation, became famous for documenting human tragedies in the very epicenter of war in foreign countries, where their country directly or indirectly laid a hand.
Going back to 2017, it is worth remembering how the Russian authorities were unhappy with the photo of Turkish photographer Burhan Ozbiliji, which won the nomination “Photo of the Year” at World Press Photo. A photo with the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov by 22-year-old Turkish policeman Mevlut Altintash caused outrage from the Russian authorities.
“Russian Embassy condemns victory over WPP photo with killer of Ambassador Karlov.” (“Gazeta.ru”).
Russia called the victory of the photo with the murder of its ambassador “a complete degradation of customs and moral values,” adding: “propaganda of terror is unacceptable.”
In contrast to the Russians, Ukrainian photographers, winners of World Press Photo 2023 and 2024 Yevgeny Maloletka and Yulia Kochetova, filmed the war in their own country. Yevhenii from Photoreportfrom besieged Mariupol and Yulia with powerful multimedia projectThey spoke to the world about this war on their own behalf.
“For me, this is a moment that I want to forget all the time, but I can't. This story will always stay with me,” Yevhenii Maloletka said in Interviews Associated Press prior to the announcement of the winners.
The works of Ukrainian photographers have become symbols of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
“I think it's really importantthat it was the Ukrainian who won the contest, demonstrating the atrocities of Russian troops against the civilian population in Ukraine. It is important that all the photos we took in Mariupol became evidence of a war crime against Ukrainians,” Maloletka comments to the Associated Press.
The Kremlin authorities, spreading fakes and disinformation, tried to neutralize the efforts of Ukrainian photojournalists to tell about Russian war crimes through the frame.
Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers publishedrefutation of Russian fakes against the photo of Evgeny Maloletka and told, as propaganda, used a photo with the flag of Yulia Kochetova in its material about black transplantation.
So the victory of Russian photojournalists in 2025 is an attempt by Russian propaganda to continue what started back in 2014. The Kremlin authorities still hope to twist the history of this war and influence the world community.
Recall that among the winners of the World Press Photo 2025 competition is again a Russian Mikhail Tereshchenko, as well as a Belarusian and a German with works from Ukraine, which were shamefully put in a visual pair.
About the resonance caused by the results of this year's competition and the position of the community Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers wrotein their material.
As a result of numerous appeals to World Press Photo, the organizers of the contest and the jury asked for a visual pair of photos of a girl from Kharkiv region suffering from panic attacks and a wounded “DPR” militant, promised to improve and revokedinvitation to Russian photographer Mikhail Tereshchenko to the award ceremony in Amsterdam.
Mikhail Tereshchenko, who won the “Photographic Stories” category with a series of pictures about the protests in Tbilisi, is a photocorrespondent for the Russian state propaganda news agency “TARS”, which is part of the Kremlin pool. Tereshchenko himself actively supports Russian aggression in Ukraine, lifted the occupation of Mariupol by the Russian army in 2022 and called the invasion of Russians “liberation”.
Georgian and Ukrainian photojournalists and photojournalists opposed his victory, accusing the contest of legitimizing Russian propaganda.
Our full support and solidarity with Ukrainian and Georgian photo communities expressedorganizers of the International Festival of Contemporary Photography Odesa Photo Days, which in 2023 and 2024 was a partner of the annual World Press Photo exhibition in Ukraine. In particular, photographer, founder and curator of the Odessa Photo Days festival, as well as a member of the global and head of the regional European jury World Press Photo 2023 Kateryna Radchenko noted that Odesa Photo Days Festival will not organize an all-Ukrainian tour of the exhibition of World Press Photo 2025 winners.
“[...] The awards determined by the global jury were not withdrawn, thus Russian propagandist and foreign authors who knowingly or unknowingly impersonate Russian propaganda remain the winners of the prestigious photojournalism and documentary photography competition. With this in mind, Odesa Photo Days will not participate in the organization of the all-Ukrainian tour of the exhibition of World Press Photo winners in 2025”, laid outthe position of the festival Ekaterina Radchenko.
In turn, Ukrainian photographer, winner of World Press Photo 2024 Julia KochetovaCommenting on the scandalous results of this year's contest, she noted: “Obviously, I am surprised to see so much attention to the narrative about the 'Russian soul' among this year's regional winners. I can't imagine how Georgian photographers feel about the fact that their protests against Russian influence were shown through an image of a photographer from a Russian state agency. It is a personal responsibility — as they will talk about this war years from now. It is important to continue to testify and document.”
Contributors:
Researcher, author: Yana Yevmenova
Image editor: Olga Kovaleva
Literary editor: Yulia Futey
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