The Russian Embassy to Ukraine has joined efforts to secure the release of Andrei Sushenkov and Anton Malyshev, journalists from the Russian TV channel Zvezda detained in Ukraine, and the OSCE has been informed about the incidents as well, the TV channel said in a statement on its website.
“Embassy press secretary Oleg Grishin has told us whom our diplomats
have addressed. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) has been informed of the incident,” it said.
“An enquiry has been sent through operational channels,” Zvezda said.
“Results are being expected now, and the diplomats hope they will not
be long in coming. The embassy is keeping the issue under its control,”
it said.
It was reported earlier that a Ukrainian National Guard unit had
detained Sushenkov and Malyshev near the community of Bylbasivka, not
far from Sloviansk, on Friday.
“TV channel’s cameraman Andrei Sushenkov managed to inform the
producer in Moscow on the phone at about 5:30 p.m. local time that they
were undergoing a search at a National Guard checkpoint near the
community of Bylbasivka and that all documents had been taken away from
them. Then communication with the journalists was lost,” says the
statement on the TV channel’s website.
Sloviansk resident Ruslan Zaslavsky, who had been driving the
journalists to this city, told Zvezda that National Guard soldiers put
balaclavas on the journalists’ heads the wrong way around, “so that they
couldn’t see anything,” and put the men on their knees.
Cameraman Sushenkov and sound engineer Malyshev had officially
entered Ukraine to cover Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s
inauguration ceremony.
The TV channel’s management has urged President Poroshenko to free
the journalists. The TV channel also appealed for support to the entire
journalistic community.
The National Guard had detained journalists Oleg Sidyakin and Marat
Saichenko from the LifeNews TV network in the Donetsk region in mid-May.
The two were freed at the end of May.
