Kirill Vyshinsky, the executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya News Agency who spent more than a year in a prison in Ukraine over support of the country's breakaway regions, on Wednesday thanked OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir for the support in promoting his release and handed him a list of journalists who are still in the Ukrainian custody
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th November, 2019) Kirill Vyshinsky, the executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya news Agency who spent more than a year in a prison in Ukraine over support of the country's breakaway regions, on Wednesday thanked OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir for the support in promoting his release and handed him a list of journalists who are still in the Ukrainian custody.
Vyshinsky was detained in Kiev in May 15, 2018 on suspicion of treason over his alleged support of Luhansk and Donetsk, two eastern Ukrainian regions which proclaimed independence after what they considered to be a coup in Kiev in 2014. The journalist spent more than 400 days in pre-trial detention, with the court repeatedly postponing the hearing of his case.
"I would like to personally thank Mr. Desir. I still have a bunch of reports published this year and my surname appears in nearly every one of your statements," Vyshinsky said during the Moscow-hosted OSCE international conference on media freedom and safety of journalists.
Vyshinsky confessed that in the past he believed that if he kept his working standards up, his profession would ensure him protection. Now this certainty seems naive to him, he added.
"I have prepared a list of my Ukrainian colleagues who are still in prison. Knowing what you can, at least judging from my own experience, I have prepared another list, but not with surnames. This is a list of media representatives of which are denied accreditation, taken off trains, banned from entering Ukraine and other countries, striped of visas and so on," Vyshinsky added.
The conference on "Freedom of the Media and Safety of Journalists in the Russian Federation and the OSCE region: Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age" is underway in Moscow under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and with support of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also thanked Desir for promoting Vyshinsky's release.
Vyshinsky was let free from custody in August. Desir, who is also present at the media freedom conference in Moscow, had repeatedly expressed concerns over Ukraine's actions toward Vyshinsky and called for the journalist's release. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in turn, said that Vyshinsky's arrest was politically motivated and was yet another demonstration of how the former Ukrainian authorities' targeted journalists.
