Journalists Vyacheslav Bondarenko and Maksym Osovsky, detained on May 26 by the illegal armed forces of Luhansk region, will be freed soon, Vasyl Nikitin, the prime minister of the self-declared 'Luhansk People's Republic', said.
Nikitin said that the two detained men have nothing to do with the press. “When we were examining their cameras we found images of checkpoints taken from different angles, as well as papers carrying the schedule of the exchange of the guards, and maps of the checkpoints’ defenses.” Nikitin said at a press conference in the building of the Luhansk state administration on May 27.
He said journalists would not need such information, which confirms that they were spying for the Ukrainian law enforcement services.
The journalists confessed, he said, that they were “gathering information for Kyiv.”
The reporters’ lives are not in danger and they will be released soon, he said, but did not elaborate.
Website editor Bondarenko and reporter Osovsky were detained by the United Southeast Army on May 26 at a checkpoint in the Luhansk region on suspicion of spying for Kyiv.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office earlier qualified the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics as terrorist organizations.
