The accusations brought by Kiev against RIA Novosti Ukraine portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, who celebrates his 52nd birthday on Tuesday, are absurd and the trial against the journalist is doomed to collapse, Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, said
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th February, 2019) The accusations brought by Kiev against RIA Novosti Ukraine portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, who celebrates his 52nd birthday on Tuesday, are absurd and the trial against the journalist is doomed to collapse, Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, said."Today is the birthday of Kirill Vyshinsky and this is a very sad day for us. It is sad because, since May 15, Kirill has been [held] in a Ukrainian prison, for no reason, as a prisoner of conscience ... He is an active and bright person, who used to lead an active lifestyle, and what is happening to him now is a real torture. The process has been artificially delayed, I think, because the trial will inevitably collapse since the accusations [against Vyshinsky] are absurd," Kiselev told reporters.
The Rossiya Segodnya chief stressed that a person, who had "not been engaged in any other work in his life except journalism," could not be accused of treason.
Vyshinsky wrote a letter on his birthday thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support, in which he said that his case had a "clear political background." According to the journalist, Kiev "needed yet another pretext for anti-Russian hysteria" ahead of the Ukrainian presidential election, scheduled for late March.
The journalist was detained in Kiev in May, on suspicion of treason and support for the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, and has been held in custody ever since. Earlier in January, Vyshinsky's defense team appealed a Ukrainian court's decision to keep him under arrest.
According to Putin, Vyshinsky's arrest is politically motivated and demonstrates Ukrainian authorities' unacceptable policy, aimed at targeting journalists who are just doing their jobs.
Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Harlem Desir has expressed his concern over Ukraine's actions toward Vyshinsky and called for the journalist's release, stressing that all OSCE members had pledged to create the necessary conditions to allow journalists to work freely.
