[11][12] In 2009, Chernov won another first place award in local photo expo "Almost disappearing Kharkiv", covering crumbling examples of the city's older architecture.
[25] In late 2013 in Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Chernov photographed the mass protests of Euromaidan as a MediaPort and Unframe correspondent.
In December 2013, pro-Yanukovych police injured Chernov's hand with a baton, tore up his press credentials, and destroyed his photography equipment.
[27][28] Many international reporters flocked to cover the Ukrainian Revolution which later transitioned into the annexation of Crimea and War in Donbas.
Chernov provided the international reporters with local assistance, also starting as a translator and a stringer for Associated Press.
[25][29] Chernov's background in photography and his partnership with other reporters allowed him to polish his video filming skills and become a regular freelancer for Associated Press in May 2014.
[29] By July 2014, Chernov already worked as an independent multi-format (text, photo, and video) journalist for Associated Press.
[33] On his third day working as an independent AP journalist, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in the area, and Chernov provided the first images of the incident.
[42] Chernov's photographs were also published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, Die Zeit, and his videos were aired on BBC, Euronews, CNN, Fox News, Sky News, Al Jazeera.
Chernov's photo and video became incontrovertible evidence that Taraikovsky was shot at point-blank range by members of the special forces on August 10, 2020 in Minsk, while government media tried to portray the incident as something that happened due to the carelessness of a protester.
[58] At the New Zealand documentary film festival Doc Edge, 20 Days in Mariupol was awarded in two nominations: Best Director (Mstyslav Chernov) and Best Editing (Michelle Mizner).
[65] The Ukrainian Oscar Committee nominated "20 Days in Mariupol" from Ukraine for the 96th Academy Awards in the category "Best International Feature Film".
He is a natural visual storyteller and his signature trait – compassion for humanity that suffuses almost every image – has ensured that his work has had an immediate impact.
"[29] A judge of Royal Television Society Awards commented that "[Chernov] has an exceptional eye for detail and a full range of shots across his portfolio, capturing emotion and conveying the fear and sometimes panic that was at the heart of so many news events last year.
"[43] Chernov prefers to work "light," carrying simpler, smaller equipment, that could always be on him and ready to shoot at all times.
[35] In January 2020, Chernov presented his psychological novel Dreamtime (Ukrainian: Часи сновидінь), a 500-page fiction conceived and written over an 8-year period.
[84][83] It features four intertwined plot lines that span across vast geography from Eastern Ukraine to Southern Europe, then to Southeast Asia, yet united by a common theme of internal conflict resolution.
[82][83] The novel was launched in Kyiv as a focal point of a video art exhibition devoted to the role of media in creating public collective experiences.
[84][86] The novel was included in the TOP books of 2020 by volunteers, writers and military journalists about the Russian-Ukrainian war according to "Army FM".
[87] Literary expert and critic Tetyana Trofymenko believes that The Dreamtime is unexpectedly strong and stylistically formed prose for a debutant.
[88] Journalist and critic Yuryi Volodarsky called the novel the first large-scale literary text in Ukrainian literature in which the war in Donbas is shown from the other side of the front.
[89] On September 26, 2023, Mstislav Chernov stated that the publishing house "Samit-knyga" had not paid him a fee two years after the publication of the novel and refused to report on the sale of the book.