The Ukrainian authorities have promised to impose sanctions against journalists for traveling to the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass not through the territory controlled by Kiev. The statement was published by the Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko in Telegram-channel.
Earlier, Reuters interviewed the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin. According to Tkachenko, Pushilin’s rhetoric can be described with the phrase “Putin pamagi” (spelling and punctuation preserved – approx. “Tapes.ru”). “But my question is not to the militants, whose actions will be assessed either by a court or a tribunal, but to journalists who, under the dressing of standards to give information from all sides, legitimize terrorism,” the head of the Ministry of Culture said.
A foreign journalist can enter the part of Donbas not controlled by Kiev only through Ukrainian checkpoints along the demarcation line, Tkachenko recalled. Visiting these territories in any other way will be considered a violation of Ukrainian laws and will entail appropriate sanctions, regardless of which country’s journalist committed the violation, the minister threatened.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko also commented on the Reuters publication, in which Pushilin was called the leader of the separatists. “Reuters, there are no separatists in the Donbass, there is a Russian occupation administration there,” he wrote in Twitter.
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