Russian Embassy in Kyiv trying to get Russian detainees freed - ambassador
MOSCOW. June 7 (Interfax) - The Russian Embassy in Kyiv has launched action to achieve the release of two Russian journalists who were arrested in eastern Ukraine on Friday on suspicion of spying, the ambassador said in a television program on Saturday.
The embassy requested intervention from the Ukrainian mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the OSCE has already issued a statement, Mikhail Zurabov told Russia's Rossiya 24 television.
"Our consulate in Kharkiv has also received guidelines and is starting to take necessary measures. The embassy has also drafted a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I will sign in literally within the next half hour," he said.
He expressed hope that the government to be formed by Petro Poroshenko, who was sworn is as president of Ukraine on Saturday, would join forces with authorities in eastern Ukraine to prevent such incidents.
"And in this specific case, we will do our best to have the journalists released and safely return not only to work but also to Russia," he said.
Cameraman Andrei Sushenkov and sound engineer Anton Malyshev, who work for Russia's Zvezda (Star) television and legally arrived in Ukraine on June 4 to cover Poroshenko's inauguration, were arrested by a National Guard unit near the village of Bylbasivka, not far from Slovyansk, while they were traveling to that city in a car.
Sushenkov was able to tell a producer in Moscow by phone that he and Malyshev were currently having their things searched at a National Guard checkpoint near Bylbasivka, and that they had had all their papers taken away from them. After that the line broke off.
Ruslan Zaslavsky of Slovyansk, in whose car Sushenkov and Malyshev had been traveling, told Zvezda that the National Guards had pulled balaclavas on the journalists' heads back to front "so they shouldn't be able to see anything," and put them on their knees.