MOSCOW, August 31. /TASS/. First Channel reporter Anna Kurbatova, who was detained on August 30 by the Ukrainian Security Service and deported to Russia, has returned to Moscow on Friday. An Aeroflot flight from Minsk landed at the Sheremetyevo Airport, a TASS correspondent reported.
More than two dozens of colleagues are meeting Kurbatova in the Terminal F arrivals area.
Secretary of the Russian Union of Reporters Timur Shafir told TASS that "the reaction is the same: joy that our colleague was not injured, that she is alive, that she was not abducted."
"We are glad that the global reporters’ community quickly responded to this outrageous situation," he added.
The deportation
On Wednesday, August 30, Russian television channels reported abduction of First Channel special correspondent Anna Kurbatova. It later emerged that she had been taken by the Ukrainian Security Service employees, because her reports "harmed national interests." She was expelled from the country in the evening with a three-year ban to enter it.
The official document says that the reporter poses "a threat to Ukraine’s national security and sovereignty," she said.
Kurbatova had prepared a report on pressure against reporters in the country ahead of her detention, and a few days prior to that the First Channel had released her report on military parade on the Day of Independence. In this report, the journalist called the parade "a march of dependence" and the date "a sad holiday." Kiev, in her opinion, has returned to the "turbulent 90s", and Ukraine is totally dependent on America and Europe."