MOSCOW, July 25. /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow is disdained by the arrest in Tallinn, Estonia, of a crew of the Zvezda TV channel, Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and supremacy of law told ITAR-TASS.
"A report on the detention of two reporters working for Zvezda at Tallinn airport causes grave concern and indignation," he said. "This is a yet another crude encroachment on free speech, which unfortunately have become increasingly frequent in Estonia when it comes to the reporters working for the Russian mass media," Dolgov indicated.
The Russian embassy in Estonia has sent an officer to the Tallinn airport to clarify the situation with the detention of two Russian journalists, Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy Konstantin Dolgov told ITAR-TASS on Friday. “We demand the Russian journalists be released immediately,” Dolgov said. “The Russian embassy and the foreign ministry are following this situation."
Russia’s Zvezda TV channel got in touch with one of its two journalists detained at the Tallinn airport on Friday.
“Maxim (Gritsenko, a special correspondent) picked up to say he could not speak,” Maxim Dodonov, Zvezda’s director of news broadcasting, told ITAR-TASS, adding that the channel had got in touch with the Zvezda crew driver who confirmed that the two journalists had been detained.
Earlier on Friday, the television channel reported that its two journalists, special correspondent Maxim Gritsenko and cameraman Vyacheslav Amelyutin, who had arrived in Estonia to provide coverage of the annual meeting of veterans of the 20th Waffen SS division in Sinimae, had been detained at a passport control desk without any explanations. “All their belongings were seized. They were deprived of a possibility to get in touch with the editorial desk,” Zvezda said on its website.
Zvezda’s editorial desk is trying to clarify the situation, Alexei Pimanov, the president of the Krasnaya Zvezda media holding, told ITAR-TASS.