MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) – The Russia-based LifeNews TV channel said Thursday its missing correspondent Kristina Babayeva has been discovered in police custody in Ukraine’s Mariupol, where she was detained together with protesters who attempted to storm a local military base overnight.
“Babayeva is going through the necessary [police] procedures. After that she is expected to be released,” LifeNews wrote on its website.
In recent weeks, foreign journalists have become victims of entry bans, threats, robbery and kidnapping in Ukraine.
The LifeNews cameraman said police had been indiscriminately arresting everyone they managed to lay their hands on as the scuffle erupted. The channel earlier reported it had failed to locate the whereabouts of Babayeva during the siege of the port city in Ukraine’s southeast, marked as a target for the regime’s anti-terror operation.
“LifeNews correspondent Kristina Babayeva hasn’t been responding to phone calls for the past few hours, her handset is out of coverage,” the channel said Thursday.
The Ukrainian National Guard said that on Wednesday night unidentified gunmen tried to storm a military base in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. A LifeNews crew arrived at the scene to cover the events. The correspondent and cameraman ventured close to the fortified compound when shots rang out.
A group of protesters arrived at the base in Mariupol on Wednesday evening and called on troops to abandon the facility. A violent confrontation broke out after the army refused to cooperate. Three people were reported killed and 13 injured in the clashes overnight, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said.
Russian reporters have come under increased pressure for their work in Ukraine. A crew of Rossiya TV channel was detained by the military Wednesday in southeastern Ukraine, where current Kiev authorities had started a special operation with the military.
There have been reports of attacks on reporters who have traveled to the region to cover the ongoing protests, in addition to entry and accreditation bans. On Tuesday, unknown assailants beat Evgeniy Polojii, an editor of the Panorama newspaper, while the editor of Gorlovka.ua and reporters from Hromadske TV were kidnapped but later released.
Members of a BBC television crew have had equipment stolen, while reporters from Russian news channel RT and the Lenta.ru website were kidnapped.
An OSCE representative said Wednesday that journalists in Ukraine face violence and intimidation, alerting the international community that unless measures are taken, the deterioration of the security situation in the country might reach a dangerous state.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday expressed concern about the deplorable state of press freedom in Ukraine, urging Western partners to condemn the inaction of Kiev’s authorities.
