German picture prize shortlists Kremlin media-linked photographer for occupied Mariupol sequence

A Russian photographer with ties to Kremlin-backed media has been shortlisted for considered one of Germany’s main images awards for his sequence on occupied Mariupol, elevating considerations about how Russian narratives are reaching Western audiences by main cultural establishments.

Since 1979, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award has honored photographers from everywhere in the world whose work captures humanity’s relationship with the surroundings.

The photographs in Valery Melnikov’s sequence “Open Wounds” painting destroyed buildings and desolate individuals within the Ukrainian port metropolis, which the Russian army besieged in 2022.

However, like a lot of Melnikov’s work, he avoids condemning the Russian army, which blockaded, bombed, and finally occupied the town.

Melnikov has persistently showcased his work on the warfare in Ukraine to worldwide audiences utilizing impartial language.

In an artist assertion on Melnikov’s web site, he says that he’s most within the “third side” of the warfare — the aspect of “ordinary civilian people.”

This deliberate selection of phrases not solely lets him sidestep direct condemnation of Russia’s crimes but in addition suggests, to a less-informed viewers, that Ukraine shares some duty for the devastation.

“Being ‘neutral’ when Russia wages a genocidal war against Ukraine means siding with perpetrators of crimes,” Ukrainian picture critic Dmytro Kyyan, who was the founding editor of Foto & Video Magazine in Moscow within the Nineties, advised the Kyiv Independent.

“There is no doubt that Melnikov knows the definition of the word ‘ethics’ and so, it is also undoubtedly true that he has been positioning himself quite comfortably as unethical, taking into account his many illegal trips to the occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014.”

Melnikov’s earlier sequence “Black Days of Ukraine,” in regards to the 2014 warfare in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, employs equally misleading language by presenting Russia’s preliminary invasion as a battle between Ukraine and so-called separatists.

There is not any point out of Russian troopers within the artist assertion for “Black Days of Ukraine” on his web site — simply “self-proclaimed people’s republics,” the time period Russian occupation authorities use to justify their narrative of “separatists” in Eastern Ukraine.

The description for his sequence “Gray Zone” additionally furthers this concept by refined references to “the people of Donbas,” as if those that stay there don’t totally belong to Ukraine.

While the outline of the “Open Wounds” sequence on the Leica Oskar Barnack Award’s web site acknowledges that Mariupol is a Ukrainian metropolis and was beneath siege by Russia at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, it makes no point out that it’s presently beneath Russian occupation.

Instead, the outline solely emphasizes that Melnikov’s work “focuses on residents who have remained in the city and suffer the unbearable humanitarian consequences of the war.”

Given the intensive surveillance imposed by Russian authorities in Ukraine’s occupied territories, it’s extremely unlikely Melnikov might have labored there with out their information — and, by extension, their approval.

Based on publicly accessible info, Melnikov has connections to Russian state media, making him a part of one of many Kremlin’s most influential propaganda instruments.

His biography on the World Press Photo’s web site signifies that he has labored for Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today), a Russian state-owned information company, since 2009.

Rossiya Segodnya oversees a number of main media manufacturers inside Russia, together with RIA Novosti and Sputnik.

Melnikov was listed as a decide for the 2025 Andrei Stenin Contest for younger photojournalists, which is organized by the Rossiya Segodnya media group. The prize is known as after a photographer who was killed in 2014 overlaying the warfare from Russia’s aspect for RIA Novosti.

Although Melnikov claims to concentrate on the “humanitarian” aspect of the warfare in Ukraine, impartial of politics, Russian state media protection leaves little doubt that his work serves the Kremlin’s narrative.

On RIA Novosti’s web site, an article from 2025 additionally particulars how Melnikov’s work as a photojournalist is included in a Japanese historian’s e book about “the genocide committed by Ukraine in the Donbas” since 2014.

There can be a 2023 article on Rossiya Segodnya’s web site about Melnikov’s picture exhibition “Returning Home,” held on the Victory Museum in Moscow, which tells the “poignant stories” of households being “reunited” after Russia’s “liberation” of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Melnikov’s work with Russian state media — which overtly pushes narratives justifying Russia’s warfare towards Ukraine — raises critical considerations in regards to the extent of his worldwide recognition, particularly when revered Western establishments are those serving to to raise these narratives, in keeping with Kyyan.

“Seeing a series hypocritically titled ‘Open Wounds,’ taken by a Russian photographer in an occupied Ukrainian city, raises a serious question regarding the moral principles of the (Leica Oskar Barnack Award’s) international jury if they know that this photographer is associated with the Russian propaganda network that is nothing more than a 21st-century version of Die Deutsche Wochenschau in Nazi Germany,” Kyyan mentioned.

Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, who risked his life to doc Russian warfare crimes in Mariupol at the beginning of the full-scale warfare, advised the Kyiv Independent that the work of photographers like Melnikov is a part of Russia’s efforts to “use soft power to push their narrative to the world.”

“War is always covered by media professionals from various angles. This has been the case in the past and will continue to be the case. But the visual context is unquestionable,” Maloletka mentioned.

“For us as Ukrainians, (Melnikov’s ambiguous framing of the war) is absurd, and we feel anger because of this misinformation.”