MOSCOW, June 09. /ITAR-TASS/. Alexei Pimanov, President of the Krasnaya Zvezda media holding, has expressed gratitude to everyone who took part in the release of Krasnaya Zvezda journalists Andrei Sushenkov and Anton Malyshev from captivity in Ukraine.

"I congratulate all of us; we are all exhausted after long hours of torment, but I am extremely grateful to the journalists’ community. We had hoped for support which proved bigger than we expected. Therefore, I thank all the colleagues, all media channels, radio stations and websites, which joined that struggle. I have always said that when we are together we are invincible," Pimanov said in his message of gratitude.

The two journalists of Krasnaya Zvezda arrived in Ukraine to report about the inauguration of Petro Poroshenko as the Ukrainian president. Contact with the two journalists had been lost since they arrived at a check point in the Donetsk region on June 6. Afterwards, the press service of the Ukrainian national guards said that the journalists were suspected of spying after servicemen of a Ukrainian block post and collecting unauthorized information.

The administration of Krasnaya Zvezda TV channel appealed to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, asking for assistance and also asked all the journalist community for support. The Russian embassy in Ukraine joined common efforts for the release of the captivated journalists.

Last night the journalists were released and returned to Moscow. They said that they had been kept in a small, hot room practically with no water with air temperatures rising as high as 50 degrees Celsius. "We were hungry and feeling hot, being kept in a dirty room, where we experienced physical pain at times. We were not tortured, but were ordered by fist to say whether we had been working for some secret services who might have recruited us," the journalists said.