MOSCOW, June 19. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine again accused a group of Russian journalists, who are covering the situation in the southeast of the country, of abetment to militia. Special correspondents of the online news portal LifeNews, Rossiya 24 TV news channel and Komsomolskaya Pravda daily were put on wanted list by the Ukrainian Security Service, in particular, because they had allegedly hampered Ukrainian military actions. LifeNews TV news channel reported this on Thursday. Names of nine Russian journalists are on the Ukrainian wanted list.

Manhunt after media people in Ukraine has sparked up in May then growing into large-scale actions of intimidation. Two journalists of LifeNews were detained a month ago near the city of Kramatorsk in east Ukraine’s Donetsk Region, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council accused them of abetment to terrorism. In June a high-profile public scandal flared up in Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, when lawmaker Oleh Lyashko who leads the Radical Party tore journalist’s certificates to pieces and ousted a group of central Russian television and radio broadcasting company VGTRK reporters from parliament blaming them of espionage. Two journalists from TV Zvezda channel were captured also in June in Ukraine on accusation of “surveying the roadblock and information collection.”

Head of the committee for protection of freedom of speech of the Russian Union of Journalists Pavel Gutionov described the attitude of Ukrainian law enforcers to independent press as “that causing protest.”

Provision of working conditions for journalists in tense situations and conflict according to the protocols to the 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1996 Council of Europe recommendations is in the focus of attention by the United Nations Organization and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).