MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) – The office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media is checking reports that Rossiya Segodnya photographer Andrei Stenin went missing in Ukraine earlier this week, a source in the organization told RIA Novosti Friday.
“The office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media is checking the information about the disappearance of Andrei Stenin,” the source said.
Earlier in the day, an informed source said that Stenin is currently being held by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in southern Ukraine.
The SBU claimed it did not detain the Rossiya Segodnya photographer.
Stenin went missing on August 5 while covering the events in Donetsk, Slaviansk and other eastern Ukrainian cities. According to sources at the headquarters of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, the Russian journalist could have gone to the city of Shakhtarsk with the militia’s press corps.
The Russian Embassy to Ukraine is looking into the circumstances of the incident.
Stenin’s abduction is not the first incident of mass media workers coming into harm’s way in Ukraine. Back in June, a cameraman for Russia's Channel-1 TV station was fatally wounded in the stomach. Prior to that, a reporter and a sound engineer from Russia's VGTRK media holding were killed in a mortar attack near Luhansk.
