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Russia’s embassy asks Kyrgyzstan to clarify reasons for journalist’s expulsion

Police said a Russian journalist violated the country’s migration law as he had failed to undergo registration procedures in due time

BISHKEK, March 13. /TASS/. Russia’s embassy in Kyrgyzstan has asked the authorities to clarify the reasons for expelling Russian journalist Grigory Mikhailov and banning him from entering the country.

"We know about this situation, I spoke with him (Mikhailov) on the phone on Friday evening," a spokesperson for the embassy, Darya Pakhomova, told TASS. Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry has refused to comment on the expulsion of the Russian journalist.

Mikhailov, the editor-in-chief of the Kyrgyz bureau of the Regnum non-governmental Russian news agency, was stopped by police in Bishkek for a document check on Friday. Police said the Russian journalist violated the country’s migration law as he had failed to undergo registration procedures in due time.

The journalist said the police had asked him to leave the Central Asian republic via the Ak Zhol checkpoint located on the border with Kazakhstan and again enter the country in order not to violate migration rules. Mikhailov was taken to the border in a police vehicle. He tried to come back to Kyrgyzstan but found out that he was banned from entering the country.

Mikhailov, who has worked in Kyrgyzstan since 2002, said he does not know the reasons for this ban and this decision of the Kyrgyz authorities.