DONETSK, November 25. /TASS/. The ministry of state security of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) detained journalists from the Russian TV channel Dozhd because they did not have appropriate accreditation for working on DPR’s territory, the ministry’s press service said on Friday.

"The activities of the opposition TV channel Dozhd was uncovered on the territory of the republic without appropriate accreditation by DPR’s ministry of information," the press service said. "The journalists were called to the ministry’s administrative building to provide explanations of illegal journalistic activities and to demonstrate the footage that they made," it added.

After watching the footage provided by Dozhd journalists, the ministry established "not objective and provocative character" of the materials that misrepresent the social-economic and political situation in DPR.

"Journalists of Dozhd TV channel, Russian citizens Vasily Andreyevich Polonsky and Sergey Borisovich Yerzhenkov, were deported to the Russian Federation for violating the DPR law on journalistic activities on the territory of the republic," the press service said.

Russia’s TV channel Dozhd said earlier on Friday that it cannot get in touch with its two journalists, Sergey Yerzhenkov and Vasily Polonsky, in Donetsk. "Before disappearing, Polonsky told the editorial desk the shooting team had been detained by the ministry of state security of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)," Dozhd said on its website. On Thursday, the journalists interviewed former secretary of the DPR Security Council Alexander Khodakovsky.

Khodakovsky said he thinks the journalists "were detained for a preventive conversation because the press secretary of DPR’s Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko had gone beyond her authority to accredit the Dozhd journalists without Zakharchenko’s permission.".