The 2025 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize was awarded to Ukrainian journalist and human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, on Monday 29 September at the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The winner, a co-founder of the Zmina Human Rights Centre and of Hromadske Radio, volunteered in the Ukrainian army at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.
Captured and sentenced to 13 years in prison, he was released in a prisoner exchange in October 2024.
Maksym Butkevych is the first Ukrainian to receive the Václav Havel Prize.
The other two finalists were Georgian journalist, Mzia Amaghlobeli, and Azerbaijani journalist, Ulvi Hasanli, both of whom are still imprisoned in their home countries.
At the opening of the ceremony, Theodoros Rousopoulos, President of the Assembly, said that it was no coincidence that the three shortlisted candidates were journalists.
“Without the right to freedom of expression and free, independent and pluralistic media, there is no true democracy”, he stressed, pointing out that the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists had counted 171 journalists in detention in Europe by mid-March this year, 98 of them in Council of Europe member states, while at least 26 Ukrainian journalists were still being held illegally by Russia.
Theodoros Rousopoulos called for the immediate release of Mzia Amaghlobeli and Ulvi Hasanli. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)