Rossiya Segodnya Head Warns About Sputnik Turkey Arrest Fallout on Moscow Summit

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The head of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya news agency, Dmitry Kiselev, warned on Sunday that arrests of three journalists in Turkey who work for Sputnik, a part of his organization, could overshadow the presidential meeting.

The spokesman for the Russian president has said Vladimir Putin might meet with Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan in Moscow next Thursday or Friday to discuss fighting in Syria.

"As for the atmosphere ahead of the tentative Moscow meeting, attacks this weekend on the offices of the Sputnik international news agency in Ankara and Istanbul will hardly improve it," Dmitry Kiselev told Rossiya 1 television channel.

Sputnik journalists vanished in Ankara on Saturday after alerting the police about nationalist raids on their homes. Their families confirmed they had spent the night in custody as prosecutors looked into the stories they published. They were released without charges. Separately, the Sputnik Turkey chief editor was briefly seized from the Istanbul office during a police search on Sunday and freed after Russia complained.