MOSCOW, August 9 (RIA Novosti) - Serious measures to protect Russian journalists, working in Ukraine must be put in place, as the calls for the Ukrainian authorities to end violence against reporters and to stop hindering with their professional activities are not working, Russian writer Yuri Polyakov said on Saturday.
"Apparently, calling on the current Ukrainian authorities not to touch journalists is as pointless as to call on the Nazis in the 1930s not to burn Thomas Mann's books. Seems like we need to come up with some serious measures that would make Ukraine understand what such actions may lead to. Humanitarian 'calls' are not working, as we can see," Polyakov told RIA Novosti, expressing his concern about the agency’s photographer missing in Ukraine.
The International Information News Agency Rossiya Segodnya’s photographer Andrei Stenin, who was working in Donetsk, Slaviansk and other eastern Ukrainian cities, went missing on August 5.
An informed source told RIA Novosti on Friday that Stenin was 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.
Polyakov is a renowned writer, poet, playwright, and the chief editor of a cultural and socio-political newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta ("Literary Newspaper").
