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Zvezda camera crew may face administrative penalty in Ukraine, says deputy prime minister

According to Dmitry Kuleba, "they filmed videos while crossing the state border"

KIEV, December 12. /TASS/. The Ukrainian authorities may use administrative penalty against a camera crew of the Russian television broadcaster Zvezda, because they filmed video footage without official permission while crossing the Ukrainian border, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euroatlantic Integration, Dmitry Kuleba, said on Thursday.

"They filmed videos while crossing the state border. When they will be leaving Ukraine, the border guards may use administrative penalty against them," Kuleba tweeted. He kept quiet about the administrative measures that might be used.

The possibility Russian journalists may face administrative punishment when they will be leaving Ukraine was mentioned by the spokesman of Ukraine’s border guard service Andrei Demchenko in an interview to the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty. He explained that Zvezda employees had been allowed to enter Ukraine because they did not declare at the moment of entry they were Russian media workers. Also, the border guard service had received no information from other Ukrainian law enforcement agencies containing the names of Zvezda journalists or instructions to stop them on the border.

"During the passport check they did not mention they were employees of some Russian periodical or broadcaster. The border guards were unable to find out if it was so or not," Demchenko said. "I should also add that no evidence was available of their illegal presence in Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories."

The Ukrainian security service SBU is monitoring the presence of the Zvezda camera crew in Ukraine, he added.

Earlier, a group of journalists from the Russian TV broadcaster Zvezda was let into Ukraine. A story about the group’s visit to Kiev was uploaded to the broadcaster’s website. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky during the summit of the Normandy Quartet (Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany) in Paris on December 9 invited Russian journalists to visit Ukraine to see for themselves what the situation in the country was like. For the past few years Russian journalists were prohibited from visiting Ukraine.

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