MOSCOW, August 27 (RIA Novosti) - Recently freed Crimean journalists Yevgeniya Koroleva and Maxim Vasilenko said Wednesday that they tried to obtain some information about missing Rossiya Segodnya photographer Andrei Stenin (#freeAndrew) while being detained by Right Sector activists, but the militants said they did not know where he was.
“We have asked questions with regards to Stenin’s fate. But they [Right Sector activists] said they'd found out about his disappearance from the Internet and had no connection with it,” the journalists said.
Stenin went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5. His whereabouts are still unknown.
On August 9, Rossiya Segodnya filed a request with the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to take immediate action to locate the photographer. The request was entered into the register of pre-trial investigations on August 11.
Rossiya Segodnya editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan demanded “the speedy release of the detained Russian journalists, including our freelance photographer, who had been carrying out his professional duty.”
On August 12, Anton Herashchenko, an aide to the Ukrainian interior minister, said in an interview with Baltkom radio that security forces had arrested Stenin on charges of assisting terrorists. Later he said that the claims were misinterpreted.
Press freedom in Ukraine, especially in the country’s East, has steadily deteriorated, with journalists being detained, kidnapped and even tortured. These cases have been condemned by various international human rights organizations.
Please support Andrei Stenin’s release by sharing the hashtag #FreeAndrew via the social networks. Andrei is a professional war photographer who has reported from the most dangerous war zones in the world. You can view Andrei’s pictures from Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Libya here and his most recent shots from eastern Ukraine here.
