VIENNA, February 25. /TASS/. The number of attacks on journalists in Ukraine has decreased lately, Representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic said on Wednesday.
The OSCE envoy on the freedom of the media made her statement at a meeting of the heads of Russian and Ukrainian professional journalist organizations in Vienna.
Mijatovic said, however, the situation with the security of journalists in Ukraine remained unsatisfactory.
Her statement came at a time when a group of Russian journalists was detained in Kiev on Wednesday.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement demanding the immediate release of Russian journalists.
"Today the Security Service of Ukraine detained without giving any explanations Channel One journalists Yelena Makarova and Sergei Korenev and NTV Channel journalist Andrei Grigoryev. We demand that our journalists be immediately released and the hunt for representatives of the Russian media be halted," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Moscow expects "a corresponding reaction from specialized international organizations, primarily OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic, to new unlawful acts by the Ukrainian authorities," the statement said.
"We consider the [Ukrainian] security officials’ actions as a deliberate provocation against Russian journalists and Ukraine’s most flagrant violation of its international commitments for ensuring the security of journalists," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"It is obvious that these detentions are in line with official Kiev’s latest decisions on depriving Russian media organizations of accreditation at Ukrainian government bodies and pursue just one goal of creating the country’s fully controlled information space," the statement said.
"The territory of Ukraine is becoming an ever dangerous place for the work and life of journalists," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.