#AceNewsServices – UKRAINE – May 22 – Moscow raised on Thursday the issue of releasing Russian journalists Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saichenko during a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Russian representative at the OSCE Andrey Kelin has said.

On May 18, the Ukrainian National Guard detained Marat Saichenko and Oleg Sidyakin, reporters with Life News, near Kramotorsk. A Life News public statement said that as the journalists were being detained, Sidyakin managed to send a text message that something had gone wrong and then left his cell phone open so Life News could hear him and Saichenko explain to their captors that they are journalists and are not involved in any fighting.
He asked the Ukrainian envoy why his country’s authorities banned members of the special OSCE observer mission in Ukraine from seeing the journalists. Sidyakin and Saichenko were detained May 18 by the Ukrainian National Guard near the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region.
Also, the Russian side drew attention to Ukraine’s violation of its commitments in the area of mass media, RIA Novosti reported.

On May 20, 2014, Russia Today (RT), a Russian state television service, lost contact with their contract writer, Graham Phillips, a United Kingdom national, after he called to say he had been detained by the Ukrainian National Guard at a checkpoint in Mariupol, in south-eastern Ukraine. RT told Human Rights Watch that the next day the Interior Ministry told RT producers that Defence Ministry agents had detained Phillips.
A published RT statement said that during Phillips’ May 20 phone call with RT, he said he was “being treated OK…. They have done checks on my documentation, they found my reports and clips I have done and they’re now looking through them asking me my position on things, asking if I am a spy….” The statement also said the men who detained Phillips were not satisfied with the letter he presented from RT confirming that he works for the television service.
The British government should immediately call on Ukrainian authorities to free Phillips and meanwhile provide him access to the British consulate and a lawyer of his own choosing, Human Rights Watch said.
“RT’s reporting may not be well received by some in Kiev, but it is totally unacceptable and a blatant violation of freedom of expression to arrest journalists simply for the content or tone of their reporting,” Denber said. “Worse still is to turn an arbitrary detention into an enforced disappearance by concealing all information about where the journalist is and what’s happening to him.”
As this went to press, RT announced that Phillips would be handed over to the British consulate and that the Ukraine Security Service’s (SBU) proceedings against him were “over.”
HRW – OSCE – RT – RIA NOVOSTI
Ace Related News:
1. Human Rights Watch – 21/05/2014 – http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/21/ukraine-journalists-detained-denied-entry
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