MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - A farewell ceremony for International Information Agency Rossiya Segodnya photojournalist Andrei Stenin will be held Friday at the agency’s international press center for those wishing to pay last respects to the photographer.
The memorial service will be held from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Moscow time (06:00 to 08:00 GMT), during which the entrance to the agency’s building will be open. Later on, Stenin will be buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow at a plot not far from journalists Igor Kornelyuk, Anton Voloshin and Anatoly Klyan, who were also killed in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev announced that, according to information from the Russian Investigative Committee, Stenin, who went missing in Ukraine in early August, died about a month ago near Donetsk when the car he was traveling in while on an editorial assignment was shot at and torched on a highway just outside the city.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, the attack was carried out by Ukrainian forces on a column of refugees guarded by several eastern Ukraine independence supporters. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council has denied any involvement of Kiev’s militants in the tragedy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and other Russian politicians have expressed their condolences over Stenin’s death.
Stenin went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5. Sources suggested that the Ukrainian military could have detained the journalist, but Kiev has never officially confirmed the information. Several events in support of the journalist were held around the world while his fate remained unknown.
