Moscow, August 9 (RIA Novosti) - The American Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is investigating into the missing of Andrei Stenin, the International Information News Agency Rossiya Segodnya’s photographer, Nina Ognianova, the program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia at CPJ said.
“We are investigating the reported missing of Andrei Stenin in eastern Ukraine. We continue to call on all sides involved in the conflict in the region to respect the role of journalists and allow them to cover the news safely and without fear of reprisal,” Ognianova said.
An informed source told RIA Novosti earlier on Friday that Stenin, who went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5, is currently being held by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in the Zaporizhia Region in southern Ukraine. A spokesman for the local SBU office denied such reports.
Russia's Embassy to Ukraine is looking into the circumstances of the incident. The office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media is also checking the information about the disappearance of Stenin.
Director-General of the International Information News Agency Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselev urged the release of the agency’s photographer and expressed hope that his foreign colleagues would also urge the release of the journalist.
The OSCE press freedom watchdog has long been monitoring the deteriorating media environment and journalists’ security in the eastern Ukraine. It has registered more than a dozen of media freedom violations since the conflict broke out in mid-April.
In June, a cameraman for Russia’s Channel-1 TV station was killed in Ukraine's east. Prior to that, a reporter and a sound engineer from Russia’s VGTRK media holding were killed in a mortar attack near Luhansk.
