SIMFEROPOL, August 26 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian freelance photographer working for Rossiya Segodnya and Agence France-Presse, as well as another correspondent from the Krymsky Telegraf, who were detained by Ukraine’s Right Sector militants, have been freed and are on their way to Crimea, human rights spokesman Andrei Krisko said Tuesday.
Maxim Vasilenko and Yevgeniya Koroleva were detained Sunday, August 24, in the vicinity of the military operation in eastern Ukraine. Koroleva was allowed one phone call and she confirmed that they were detained not as regular citizens, but as journalists.
“Yevgeniya’s good friend said that last night the journalists were handed over from Right Sector to the police and then released,” Krisko said.
He added that both journalists are fine and on Tuesday morning they were on their way to Crimea.
Maxim Vasilenko and Yevgeniya Koroleva were detained Sunday, August 24, in the vicinity of the military operation in eastern Ukraine. Koroleva was allowed one phone call and she confirmed that they were detained not as regular citizens, but as journalists.
Earlier, Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division deputy director, expressed the organization’s extreme concern about the fate of the abducted journalists and demanded their immediate release, since Right Sector did not have any legal authority to conduct detentions.
This is not the first time that media representatives have suffered as a result of covering events in Ukraine. Rossiya Segodnya photographer Andrei Stenin went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5. He was allegedly detained by the Ukrainian Security Service but there has been no confirmation of that information from Kiev. Stenin’s whereabouts remain unknown.
