Nazar Borovitskyi's grave in a Kyiv military cemetery. A member of the Kabul Team that rescued The Globe's translators, he died on a mission to rescue comrades in danger behind Russian lines.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon has been awarded a Foreign Press Association Media Award for his story on the Ukrainian special-forces team that rescued the newspaper’s translators from Kabul in 2021.
Six months after the elite Ukrainian team descended into Kabul and took on the daring mission to rescue The Globe’s interpreters, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of their country. Mr. MacKinnon’s story follows these remarkable soldiers who have been on the front lines fighting their own war ever since.
Mr. MacKinnon’s article The Fearless won the prize for print and web story of the year by a full member of the FPA at a ceremony in London on Monday.
“Imagine the bravery and commitment that went into Fearless. Can it ever be repaid, or even fully understood? Independent journalism at its best, the work of Mr. MacKinnon in Ukraine stands among the finest chapters of Canadian foreign reporting,” said Globe and Mail editor-in-chief David Walmsley.
Judges wrote that story is “an amazing piece of work – more like a book than an article. A very complex, well written tale about a team of special forces fighters in Ukraine and their thoughts about the unfolding war. Extremely well researched and very human.”
The FPA Media Awards are dedicated to excellence in journalism and offer an opportunity for journalists to be recognized by their international peers, according to the award’s website.
“This whole thing was an act of gratitude from the start,” Mr. MacKinnon said, “To this team of strangers that rescued The Globe and Mail’s translators from Kabul in the summer of 2021 when no one else would, and that’s why I dedicated the award last night to Nazar Borovytskyi, who rescued my friends and then tragically died trying to rescue his own.”
This is Mr. MacKinnon’s second time being honoured by the FPA. He was recognized in 2017 for a feature about the teenagers who led a rebellion that sparked the Syrian civil war.