Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency's Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan described on Friday the Western states' hypocritical position on the detention of head of the RIA Novosti Ukraine news portal Kirill Vyshinsky as shocking
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd November, 2018) Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency's Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan described on Friday the Western states' hypocritical position on the detention of head of the RIA Novosti Ukraine news portal Kirill Vyshinsky as shocking.
On Friday, about 100 people, including prominent journalists, State Duma lawmakers, human rights activists and those not indifferent to Vyshinsky's fate, took part in a demonstration outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow. Simonyan also participated in the demonstration.
"The hypocrisy of the so-called Western states is surprising and shocking as these countries have been told us for decades about the freedom of expression, democracy ... and that nobody could be prosecuted for his opinion. The fact that they avoid [speaking about] the arrest of Kirill Vyshinsky in Ukraine [is also shocking]," Simonyan said.
According to Simonyan, if it were not for the fact that the fate of an individual just doing his job got turned around in this way, the Russian journalistic community would laugh at the West's position.
Vyshinsky was detained in Kiev on May 15 on suspicion of supporting the breakaway republics in Donbas and on treason charges. The maximum penalty for such offense is 15 years of imprisonment.
On May 17, a court of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson ruled to remand Vyshinsky in custody. The defense appealed the arrest, but the court dismissed the appeal. During a court hearing, Vyshinsky asked for help from Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also said that he would give up his Ukrainian citizenship.
Putin has said that Vyshinsky's arrest was politically motivated, adding that the incident demonstrated an unprecedented and unacceptable policy of Ukrainian authorities targeting journalists, who were just doing their jobs. The Russian Foreign Ministry lodged protests to Kiev, calling on it to stop crackdown on media.
On Thursday, the Kherson city court extended the arrest of Vyshinsky until December 28. On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Vyshinsky must be immediately released. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, Harlem Desir, has expressed his disappointment with the Ukrainian court's decision to prolong the detention of Vyshinsky.
