Ukrainian journalists win Pulitzer for work in besieged Mariupol

Ukrainian journalists Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Vasilisa Stepanenko have won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting from Mariupol, then under Russian siege, the Associated Press announced on May 8.

The journalists were recognized along with their colleague Lori Hinnant, all of whom are work for the Associated Press.

The award for public service is one of 14 categories of the prestigious Pulitzer Award for journalists.

Mariupol, located on the Azov Sea in Donetsk Oblast, has been under Russian occupation since May 2022, following a three-month-long siege that left most of the city destroyed.

Chernov, Maloletka and Stepanenko were in Mariupol at the start of the full-scale invasion and documented the atrocities committed by the Russian military while there, such as the bombing of the maternity hospital on March 9, 2022.

Chernov turned 30 hours of footage from Mariupol into a documentary feature 20 Days in Mariupol. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January where it picked up the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary Category.

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The first Russian bomb hit the outskirts of Mariupol an hour after video journalist Mstyslav Chernov arrived to the city on Feb. 24, the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. For 20 days that followed, Chernov’s team captured Russian blows strangling the city block by block.

Kyiv IndependentAnastasiia Malenko