MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti) – A de-facto ban on the entry of Russian journalists into Ukraine violates free speech and the country's constitution, Oleg Tsarov, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and a presidential candidate, told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
Such restrictions for journalists “violate free speech and the working constitution,” Tsarov said.
“Our Constitution provides every citizen of Ukraine with the right to have access to information. They have been stripped of this right,” the Ukrainian presidential candidate said.
Dunya Miyatovich, the media freedom representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), raised concerns with the Ukrainian authorities’ move to deny entry to Russian journalists on Tuesday.
The editor-in-chief of the Russian Pioneer magazine and a special correspondent for the Kommersant newspaper told RIA Novosti on Wendesday he had been denied entry to Ukraine, the latest of a series of Russian journalists barred from the country.
Five Russian journalists were prevented from entering Ukraine this week, including RIA Novosti photographer Alexei Kudenko and RIA Novosti correspondent Andrei Malyshkin, who were tasked with covering events in the eastern region of the country.
Protesters have been rallying for federalization across Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern regions, centered in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Lugansk. The demonstrators have been calling for Crimea-style referendums on the status of their regions within Ukraine.
Beginning last month, protests in eastern cities have been held each Sunday, with citizens refusing to accept their newly-appointed governors as legitimate, as they were installed by the organizers of the coup that came to power in the capital in February.
Russia has described the uprising in Kiev as an illegitimate fascist coup and a military seizure of power.
