MOSCOW, August 12 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Andrei Stenin, a Rossiya Segodnya photographer who went missing in Ukraine a week ago, had probably fallen victim to an attack.
“Taking into account that the practice of attacking and abducting journalists in Ukraine is becoming more and more widespread, we do not rule out that the experienced photojournalist might have fallen victim to a malicious attack,” the ministry said in a statement.
“We are outraged by the ongoing horrendous violations of journalists’ rights in Ukraine. We call on the Kiev authorities to immediately take all measures required to locate and release Stenin and to ensure safe working conditions for Russian and foreign media outlets who fulfill their professional duty in Ukraine,” the statement read.
Stenin went missing when reporting on the conflict in eastern Ukraine on August 5. An unnamed source told RIA Novosti last week that the journalist had been abducted by Ukrainian militia and was in the custody of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in the city of Zaporozhye. The SBU later denied this allegation.
On August 9, Rossiya Segodnya submitted a request to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to take urgent measures to find Stenin. Under the pressure of an OSCE media freedom representative, the ministry responded three days later saying it was looking into Stenin’s case.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also called for the immediate release of Stenin and said that press freedom in Ukraine, especially in its volatile southeastern regions, has steadily deteriorated in recent months, with journalists being detained, attacked, abducted and killed.
Stenin’s abduction is not the first incident with mass-media representatives in Ukraine. In June, a cameraman for Russia’s Channel-1 television 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.
Please support Andrei Stenin’s release by sharing the hashtag #FreeAndrew in social networks. Andrei is a professional war photographer reporting from the most dangerous war zones in the world. You can view Andrei’s pictures from Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya here and his most recent shots from eastern Ukraine here.
