All news

Moscow urges world response to reporter’s expulsion from Kiev

The Russian Foreign Ministry calls on international organizations to come up with an impartial response to the deportation of Russia’s NTV network correspondent from Ukraine

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry calls on international organizations, in particular the OSCE, to come up with an impartial response to the deportation of Russia’s NTV network correspondent Vyacheslav Nemyshev from Ukraine, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

"The world community has again witnessed a discriminatory, repressive policy of the official Kiev against Russian media," the statement said. "We are calling on the specialized international agencies, in particular, OSCE Representative on Media Freedom, Harlem Desir, to come up with an impartial response to violations of the rights of Russian journalists by the official Kiev. We would like ‘the old European democracies’ not to stand off from fair and necessary criticism of their junior partners’ actions."

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, "the systematic gross violations of the rights of Russian media and their absurd justification, along with the persecution of independent local journalists, which is gaining momentum, indicate that the presentation of impartial information is seen by Kiev as a real threat to the regime rather than a guarantee of the development of a democratic society." "While proclaiming the movement towards the ‘European values,’ the Ukrainian authorities are, in actual fact, building a classical totalitarian system where the suppression of dissent is the norm," the ministry noted.

Nemyshev has already returned to Russia. A source in the state border department in the Bryansk region informed TASS that the journalist had been met by Russian border guards. Earlier, he got in touch with the TV channel saying that he had spent five hours at a police station, after which Ukrainian Security Service officers brought him to the state border. Nemyshev was banned from entering Ukraine for three years.

The journalist was detained on October 4 in Kiev by police officers for a minor offense, the press service of the Ukrainian Security Service reported. According to the press service, during the identification process, police officers found an accreditation certificate issued by the "fake DPR Ministry of Information Policy," the so-called "military accreditation." That was the pretext for running an additional check and Nemyshev’s subsequent expulsion from the country.