‘Blindfolded, brought to knees’: Russian Zvezda TV crew abducted near Slavyansk
Ukraine’s National Guard have detained two journalists from Russian TV channel Zvezda at a military roadblock near the city of Slavyansk. According to their driver, during a routine check they were blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed location.
Ukrainian MP
kicks out Russian journos from parliament, calls them ‘spies’
(VIDEO)
Video operator Andrey
Sushenkov and sound engineer Anton Malyshev have been unreachable
since 14:30
GMT Friday
afternoon, Zvezda TV announced on its website.The crew was heading from Donetsk to
Slavyansk, the scene of intense fighting between the pro-Kyiv
forces and self-defense militia.
“At the approaches to Slavyansk we got in touch by phone.
They said National Guards were searching them and they would call
back as soon as the search is over. Since then their numbers are
unobtainable,” said Zvezda correspondent Evgeniy Davydov,
who was in touch with the crew during their stay in Ukraine.
Their driver, Ruslan Zaslavsky, a local citizen of Slavyansk, was
also briefly detained, but released several hours later.
The National Guards have checked the numbers of entry stamps in
journalists’ passports with someone they contacted on the radio,
before a man in plain military uniform – without a helmet or body
armor – took the guys away, Zaslavsky said.
“I saw them putting balaclavas on the guys’ heads, but the
wrong way about, so that they could not see anything,”
Zaslavsky told Zvezda after his release. “They were forced on
their knees.“
The TV crew must have been taken to nearby Kharkov or Izyum,
Zaslavsky suggested, as the roadblock was located about 5
kilometers from Slavyansk in the ”middle of nowhere“ – between
two fields – and the National Guard did not even have a tent
there.
“The channel’s directors call on the newly elected president
of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to release Andrey Sushenkov, Anton
Malyshev,” the head of Zvezda holding Aleksey Pimanov wrote
in a statement, asking the international journalist community for
support in securing the release of their colleagues.
This is not the first time Russian journalists working in Ukraine
disappear after encountering the National Guard.
On May 18, two Russian journalists working for LifeNews TV
channel – reporter Oleg Sidyakin and cameraman Marat Saichenko –
were captured by Kyiv forces near the eastern city
of Kramatorsk. Initially accused of “aiding the terrorist
groups,” they were released a week later – without any charges
pressed or evidence of their crimes provided – after a wave of
outrage by rights groups and Russian
politicians and media.
An RT journalist reporting from Ukraine, Graham Phillips, was
also detained after a search by the National Guard last
month and questioned by various Kyiv security forces for over
36 hours before being released.
The area around Slavyansk is gripped by increased violence after
Kyiv intensified what it calls an ‘anti-terrorist’ operation
against anti-government activists and militia who have taken
control of the eastern regions of the country as a mark of
protest against the Kyiv authorities.
Open all references in tabs: [1 – 6]