Comment by the Information and Press Department on the detention of the LifeNews camera crew in Kiev

Today, employees of Ukraine's Security Service detained a camera crew of the LifeNews TV channel in Kiev, consisting of correspondent Yelizaveta Khramtsova and camera operator Natalya Kalysheva. They are out of contact and their whereabouts are unknown.

Indicatively, this is far from the first case of obstruction of the work of Russian journalists, both by Ukrainian radicals and government agencies. The LifeNews employees were subjected to a direct attack, accompanied by the complete negligence of law-enforcement bodies, and they encountered artificial administrative barriers.

We demand the immediate release of the Russian journalists and an end to the vicious practice of media intimidation. We expect an adequate response from relevant international agencies, primarily OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatoviж to this, another in a line of illegal acts by the Kiev authorities, which are systematically protecting Ukraine's information space from an unbiased view on the current events.