On June 14, employees of the Russian TV channel Zvezda Yevgeny Davydov and Nikita Konashenkov were detained in the Dnepropetrovsk region and held by the Ukrainian authorities in Dnepropetrovsk. Before being detained, Davydov and Konashenkov were heading to the city’s airport for a flight to Moscow at 17.05 local time (18.05 Moscow time). They entered the territory of Ukraine officially, presenting journalistic certificates.
After the release, the journalists said that representatives of the “Right Sector” beat out testimony from journalists. The detainees were blindfolded, pushed into a car at gunpoint and taken away, as it turned out later, to the very center of Dnepropetrovsk. “They took everything: a watch, a mobile phone, even a wedding ring,” Yevgeny Davydov shared his memories. “They promised to shoot you. They said: we will shoot you, bury you in the field and no one will find you.” According to the journalists of the Zvezda TV channel, for the first 12 hours they were not given food or water, they were not allowed to go to the toilet. “Then they began to take them in turn for interrogation. I didn’t have time to sit down, when blows fell on my head, on my body, then the interrogation began,” Davydov said. “If I answered slowly or didn’t like my answer, I got a blow.” Nikita Konashenkov spoke about the same method of interrogation. Moreover, no official charges were brought against the journalists. Read in full on the ITAR-TASS website
Another conflict with the “Star”
On June 6, the Zvezda film crew – cameraman Andrey Sushenkov and video engineer Anton Malyshev – were detained at a checkpoint near Slovyansk. Armed men in black uniforms put masks on the journalists and took them away in an unknown direction, despite the fact that the film crew had officially entered Ukraine. On June 9, the journalists were handed over to the Russian side at the Nekhoteevka international checkpoint (Belgorod Region) and taken to Moscow by a special plane of the Ministry of Defense.
