MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. A producer working for Ruptly, an international video news agency and part of Russia’s RT network, has been ordered to leave Chisinau and return to Moscow, RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on Monday.
"A producer of our Ruptly video agency is being expelled from Chisinau to Moscow. His equipment has been confiscated. We are monitoring the situation," Simonyan wrote on her Twitter account.
On Monday, Moldova’s authorities denied entry into the country to a group of journalists working for Russian broadcaster LifeNews.
LifeNews editor-in-chief Anatoly Suleymanov told TASS the reporters, on Kiev’s lists of journalists banned from entering Ukraine, "have been denied entry [to Moldova] and threatened that they will be handed over to the Ukrainian side" if they made information about their detention public.
He said the crew was currently waiting in the Chisinau airport’s transit zone for their flight back to Moscow, which would most likely be only in the evening.
Moldovan border officials said the LifeNews journalists had been denied entry into the country due to the lack of accreditation with the foreign ministry.
Last spring, Moldova expelled shooting teams from Russia’s television channels Rossiya-24 and Zvezda who had planned to provide coverage of elections in Moldova’s Gagauz autonomy. The lack of accreditation was also cited as a reason for expulsion.