MADRID, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - A team of RIA Novosti correspondents was barred Sunday from entering a polling station in Ukraine's embassy in Madrid, Spain over allegedly "biased reporting on the situation in Ukraine by Russian media."
Two RIA Novosti journalists – a Russian and a Spanish citizens – were stopped from entering the station despite having all necessary documents. Local electoral committee's head Ivan Vovk said this decision had been made due to the Russian media's biased angle on the events in Ukraine, which is going through a devastating crisis.
A military confrontation in Ukraine's two eastern provinces began in mid-April, after the Ukrainian government sent troops to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to suppress pro-independence uprisings against Kiev.
Since then, media freedom watchdogs have been reporting numerous instances of abuse and violence against Russian and Western journalists at the hands of Ukrainian government forces, who accused the media of distorting the facts and destabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine.
This comes as Ukrainians are going to the polls to vote in a new parliament. The largest number of foreign polling stations have been set up in Russia, Germany, the United States, Poland and Italy. Up for grabs are 424 seats in the 450-seat unicameral parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada. The electoral threshold is 5 percent.
