VLADIMIR KOSTIN (Belarussian)
Belarus Elections
Shot in Belarus, December 2010
Commissioned and broadcast by Reuters Television

Scroll down to see footage from Vladimir's entry

Vladimir Kostin's extraordinary footage spans six days of protest on the streets of Minsk against the certain re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Claiming the result was rigged, opposition supporters tried to storm the government's headquarters. Volodya captures both the anger of the protestors and the fear in the eyes of government security forces trying to hold them back.  We also see chilling scenes as protestors are grabbed and bundled away by secret police officers.  

The judges remarked on the particular bravery "of a cameraman who not only filmed the brutality of a regime that kills journalist - he has to live there afterwards."  They were particularly impressed with the technical quality of the footage. One said: "He was absolutely in amongst the action but managed to keep on filming even when it became extremely tense - that's hard to do. And he captured some important images as he did so."

BIOGRAPHY
Vladimir Kostin was born in 1972 into a Russian military family living in Belarus. In 1996 he graduated from the Minsk Radio Engineering Institute (MRTI) as a telecom engineer.

He began to work as a TV news cameraman 1996 for the Belarus Association of Non-State Television and has since worked as a freelance for Russian channels REN-TV, TV-6 Moscow, TV-3, RTR, NTV ,Russia Channel One and TVP Poland and is currently working as a freelance for Reuters Television. In 2005 he was awarded the Dmitry Zavadsky Prize ‘for courage and professionalism’. The award was established by Channel One Russia in 2001 a year after the abduction and disappearance of Belarussian cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky.