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Ukraine FM suspends accreditation for Russian media

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stops accrediting the Russian journalists starting this week

MOSCOW, 5 March. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday announced its decision to suspend press accreditation for Russian media outlets covering events there.

"Starting this week, we will not accredit the Russian media [to events at the Foreign Ministry]," a Foreign Ministry spokesman told a TASS correspondent, who had requested accreditation for Thursday’s news conference by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

Last month, Ukraine’s Security Service issued recommendations to strip more than 100 Russian media organizations of accreditation at the country’s bodies of state power. Spokeswoman Yelena Gitlyanskaya said the list had been handed over to the administration of the Ukrainian parliament and included the TASS news agency.

On February 12, Ukrainian lawmakers voted in favour of suspending Russian journalists’ accreditation. The Ukrainian Security Service was tasked with determining the list of journalists, TV producers, cameramen and support staff of several Russian media outlets working at Ukraine’s governmental authorities that will not have press accreditation until Kiev’s military operation in east Ukraine ends.