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Russian journalist arrested in Ukraine looks forward to meeting human rights ombudsperson

Vyshinsky’s defense "welcomes any steps related to our client’s defense, including possible visits by the OSCE monitoring mission members and consular officers of other countries"

Kirill Vyshinsky AP Photo/Victor Platov

Kirill Vyshinsky

© AP Photo/Victor Platov

KIEV, June 16. /TASS/. Chief Editor of the RIA Novosti Ukraine news agency Kirill Vyshinsky, charged with high treason in Ukraine and currently kept in a pre-trial detention facility in the city of Kherson, welcomes any steps related to his defense, his attorney Andrei Domansky told TASS.

"I have just visited Kirill Vyshinsky in the pre-trial detention center," he said. "I told Kirill that the Russian human rights ombudsperson may visit him and he was glad to hear that," the attorney said, adding that the journalist’s father had had a chance to meet with his son at the detention center.

Domansky stressed that Vyshinsky’s defense "welcomes any steps related to our client’s defense, including possible visits by the OSCE monitoring mission members and consular officers of other countries".

Vyshinsky case

On May 15, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) carried out a large-scale operation against RIA Novosti Ukraine staff members, accusing them of high treason. The news agency’s Chief Editor Kirill Vyshinsky was detained. Searches were conducted in the news agency’s Kiev office and press center, as well as in some journalists’ apartments. The SBU also issued a statement claiming that "a network of media structures, which Moscow used for carrying out a hybrid war" against Kiev had been exposed.

The journalist was taken to the city of Kherson, where the city court arrested him for 60 days. The high treason charge against him is particularly based on a number of the journalist’s articles dedicated to the 2014 events in Crimea. If found guilty, the journalist may face up to 15 years in prison.

Vyshinsky, originally a Ukrainian national, obtained Russian citizenship in 2015. Vyshinsky addressed Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko from the courtroom, renouncing his Ukrainian citizenship and saying he considered himself to be only a Russian national. He also addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for legal assistance in his release.

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