Photojournalist Andrei Stenin: biography and cause of death

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:45

The work of a journalist is always fraught with danger. And perhaps the most difficult test is the choice of conscience. It is this choice that, as a rule, leads honest people to the sacrificial altar of greed at any hypocritical time. And photojournalist Andrey Stenin, of course, became one of these victims.

Nugget from the provinces

The future journalist Stenin Andrey Alekseevich was born in the Komi Republic, namely in the city of Pechora on December 22, 1980. His mother, who became a widow in 2012, works at the State Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology as a laboratory assistant. Besides him, there were no more children in the family. He showed a craving for journalism quite early, so he had no questions about choosing a profession. Therefore, after graduating from a higher educational institution in his homeland, Andrei Stenin went to Moscow in 2003.

Unfortunately, there are no great details about his life before moving to the capital. There is no data in open sources about his preferences, about how he studied at school, what institute he graduated from and what was dictatedchoosing a profession, and even more so voluntary business trips to hot spots, which he managed to see a lot during his short career.

Career start

Arriving in Belokamennaya, he began to work in the information and analytical publication Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Andrey Stenin, whose biography, unfortunately, turned out to be so short, began his professional career precisely as a journalist and wrote in the “Society” section. After that, he worked for several years on the Gazeta.ru information Internet portal. He decided to devote himself to the genre of documentary photography only five years after the start of his career. Andrey Stenin's works as a photojournalist were mainly devoted to emergencies, riots, legal proceedings and military conflicts.

Freelance work

Andrey Stenin, whose photos have an amazing ability to grab the very essence of the situation, has become quite popular in the photo correspondence market for several years. At the same time, he was a freelancer for major international news agencies Reuters, Associated Press, France Press, the Russian news agencies RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS, and the Kommersant newspaper. Andrey Stenin has been actively working in the most dangerous hot spots of recent years: in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Libya, the Gaza Strip.

He got a job in the staff of the RIA Novosti agency in 2009. At the end of 2013, the agency was liquidated, the corresponding decree was signed by President Vladimir Putin. On theOn its basis, the federal state unitary enterprise “International Information Agency “Russia Today”” was formed. Andrei Stenin, a journalist whose photos were already known, was issued as a special correspondent for the newborn agency.

His work has received multiple awards for professional achievement. He received his first award in 2010, when he became the winner of the annual national award in the field of print media "Iskra". In the same year, and also three years later, he was among the winners of the Silver Camera competition.

Death Mission

With the start of military clashes in the South-East of Ukraine, many journalists went to another suddenly emerged hot spot. Among such brave and selfless was Andrey Stenin, who went there in May last year. Carrying out an editorial task, he worked in Kyiv, as well as in places of direct armed confrontation - in Shakhtyorsk, Mariupol, Slavyansk, Lugansk and Donetsk. He had been working there for approximately three months when contact with him was lost. The last working materials from him were received on August 5 last year. It was only known that on the last trip he was accompanied by Sergey Korenchenkov and Andrey Vyachalo, employees of the "Information Corps" of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

Missing Person

The very next day, different versions of the future fate of the photojournalist began to be voiced. The most obvious and persistent was the version of the kidnapping of an employeeRussian media by the security forces of Ukraine. Three days after the disappearance of Andrei Stenin, the Rossiya Segodnya agency, citing its source in eastern Ukraine, announced the kidnapping of their employee and officially filed charges against the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the country opened a case on the fact of the disappearance of the photojournalist, but later Kyiv did not find confirmation of the version that he was really captured by the SBU.

Meanwhile, his colleagues also began searching for traces of the journalist. It became known that Stenin did not inform his leadership of the specific route of his movement in Ukraine, and after receiving the latest materials from him in Moscow, no one knew where he went. Colleagues said that the photojournalist generally liked freedom of movement, did not like it when someone put pressure from above, did not like to be in a bunch of variegated journalists, of which there are a lot during press tours. He loved his work, was devoted to it, tried to do it honestly. And the implementation of these principles did not tolerate fuss.

Ambiguous position of the Ukrainian authorities

Meanwhile, a week later, official sources reported that the Russian journalist was under arrest, that the special services of Ukraine suspect him of complicity in terrorism. This was announced on August 12 in an interview with the adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko. However, a little later, he made the reservation that he did not have accurate information on this subject, that he onlysuggested such a development of events, and the interviewers - the hosts of the Latvian radio station B altkom - misinterpreted his words. The official asked journalists not to bother him with these questions anymore. In response to the official's accusations, the radio released the recording of the interview.

Mr. Gerashchenko finally decided to vent his irritation with the incessant questions about the fate of the Russian journalist on the social network. On his Facebook page, he noted that photojournalist Andrey Stenin was wanted by the Interior Ministry, as were the other 300 people who disappeared "during the actions of terrorists." Vladimir Krasnov, better known as a prankster (telephone hooligan) under the nickname Vovan222, provoked Mr. Gerashchenko to much more unrestrained statements. Posing as an assistant to the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky, he brought the conversation to the subject of a journalist. The official, putting forward another version, suggested that the journalist died "with his terrorist friends" in the vicinity of Shakhtyorsk. The prankster recorded this conversation and posted the transcript online.

Investigation

The first assumptions about the possible death of a journalist appeared already in the twentieth of August, when the news of a body found in the vicinity of the city of Snezhnoye, not far from Donetsk, passed. The information appeared on the pages of the periodical Komsomolskaya Pravda. From the moment of his disappearance, colleagues who were on a business trip to Ukraine began an active search for him. The employees of the Komsomolskayatruth” to Alexander Kots and Dmitry Steshin. It was these journalists who managed to establish with whom and where exactly Andrei Stenin went before his mysterious disappearance.

However, both the journalist's employer and the Russian authorities asked not to hurry with reports, not to make hasty public statements and conclusions, until any official information comes from the Ukrainian side.

Meanwhile, Komsomolskaya Pravda employees reported that, according to their information, Stenin, in the company of two local journalists, whom Mr. Gerashchenko probably meant by “terrorist friends”, went to the city of Snezhnoye, to the combat zone. According to one of the militias, it was possible to establish that it was on that day that the Ukrainian regular army fired at a train from vehicles on the road to Dmitrovka. They shot not only the military, but also civilian cars. The skeletons of burnt cars were found near Dmitrovka. Renault Logan was also found there, on which, presumably, the Russian journalist moved on that ill-fated day.

The remains of three people were found in the car, and professional photographic equipment, lenses, and lenses were found in the trunk. According to open sources, the cars were first shot from machine guns and machine guns, and then from Grad installations. It was also established that after the murder, the journalist's phone switched on and off several times, moreover, someone used it to access Facebook. Those who discovered the body claimed that the journalists' car was simply burned, and the shelling of the Grad was staged to obfuscate the traces.

Support promotions

Meanwhile, the world community held one rally of support after another. Rallies in support of the missing photojournalist were held in Russia, Serbia, Great Britain, Mexico and Argentina. The public showed increased attention to the disappearance of not the first Russian journalist on the territory of Ukraine and demanded from Kyiv not only official statements, but also decisive actions to stop the arbitrariness in relation to the workers of the pen. Representatives of the OSCE spoke in support of the events, who subsequently went to the place of discovery of the body together with the Donetsk investigators. In addition, representatives of the International Federation of Journalists and the international organization Reporters Without Borders spoke rather categorically.

The Rossiya Segodnya agency itself organized an action demanding the release of the journalist. In addition, FreeAndrew tags were launched on social media.

Russian version

Andrey Stenin's death was officially confirmed on September 3, almost a month after his disappearance. Director General of MIA "Russia Today" Dmitry Kisilev announced his death, referring to the results of the examination. Thus, since the beginning of the military conflict, four Russian journalists have died in Ukraine in a few months.

The Investigative Committee of Russia, which also conducted its own investigation, put forward its own version of what happened. The ICR reported that a convoy of cars with refugees was moving to Dmitrovka from the city of Snezhnoye. Not far from the destination column, inwhich were only civilians, ran into an armed detachment, presumably the 79th separate airmobile brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces. The investigation concluded that the column, consisting of ten vehicles, was destroyed by shelling with high-explosive shells and Kalashnikov tank machine guns. The next day, the military service of Ukraine examined the scene of the incident, where they found Andrei Stenin a couple of weeks later, searched the dead, took away the found things and fired at this place again from the Grad.

The public demands

Andrey Stenin, whose photo was called one of the most impressive in the professional community, unfortunately did not have time to start a family. After his death, only his mother remained of his relatives. President Vladimir Putin offered his official condolences to the mother of the journalist who died in the line of duty on the day of the official announcement of the death. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, giving an assessment of what happened, called the case with Stenin "another barbaric murder", which, according to the department, was "the work of the Ukrainian security forces." In its message, the agency put forward a demand to Kyiv to conduct a thorough investigation. A number of international communities, including UNESCO, made a similar demand. Information about the fate of the criminal case on the death of the special correspondent is not available in open sources.

Andrey Stenin was buried on September 5 in Moscow, at the Troekurovsky cemetery. During the burial, military honors were given to him: three volleys of the guard of honor. In the same dayVladimir Putin signed a decree according to which the journalist was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.

On the same day, a photo exhibition dedicated to the tragic events in Ukraine was held in New York. At the opening of the event, where photographs of Andrey Stenin were presented in large numbers, the memory of the journalist was honored.

At the end of the summer of 2014, a fortune teller, a certain Dmitry, appeared on the Internet. He keeps a video diary on youtube.com. The "new Nostradamus", as its users immediately dubbed it, expressed its version of what will happen in Eastern Europe in the next three to five years. In the questions of subscribers, a question was also raised, the topic of which was Andrey Stenin, predictions about him were vague. In particular, he initially reported that he was "neither among the living nor among the buried." As he explained later, the confusion of his visions was due precisely to the fact that his body was burned.