Maksym Butkevych is a human rights advocate, journalist, public figure, former military serviceman, and former prisoner of war.
He is a co-founder of Hromadske Radio and the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, was a board member of the Ukrainian branch of Amnesty International, co-founder and co-coordinator of the organisation No Borders Project, worked on the protection of refugees and displaced persons, fought against discrimination, actively advocated for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners of the kremlin, including Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko, moderated screenings and events of the Docudays UA festival. He has dedicated over 15 years of his life to human rights work.
From the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion, he joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, took part in the liberation of the Kyiv Region, fought in the East, and in June 2022 was taken prisoner. In occupied Luhansk, the so-called “LPR” court sentenced Butkevych to 13 years in a high-security penal colony as a “war criminal” in a fabricated case. After two years and 4 months of imprisonment, he was released from captivity. He returned to Ukraine as part of an exchange on 18 October 2024.
During his time in Russian captivity, Maksym Butkevych was awarded the Anne Frank Award for Human Dignity and Tolerance by the Embassy of the Netherlands in the USA, the Story of Injustice award by the Czech organisation People in Need, and the National Human Rights Award of Ukraine.
