MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th August, 2020) Russian journalists Semyon Pegov, Anton Starkov and Dmitry Lasenko recently released after being detained in Minsk during Sunday night protests will be first taken to the Russian embassy in Belarus, while the issue of their departure to Russia's Smolensk will be resolved after that, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
"At this moment, three of our journalists are being taken from the place where they were held and taken to our embassy. There they will rest, and then they will make a decision on when they will be transported to Smolensk," Zakharova said in an interview with Solovyov Live show on the Rossiya 1 tv channel.
Several Russian media outlets, including Sputnik Belarus, RT, TV Rain, Meduza and Daily Storm, have said that their reporters have been detained in Minsk. According to Zakharova, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was personally overseeing how the situation with arrested reporters was unfolding.
Protests were held throughout Belarus on Sunday night after preliminary results showed incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko winning the election with over 80 percent of the vote, while the campaign team of opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has refused to recognize the results.
