Council of Europe calls on Kiev to cancel sanctions against journalists

The Council of Europe (CE) is urging official Kiev to cancel sanctions against journalists, according to a communique distributed by the CE headquarters in Strasbourg.
On Wednesday, September 16, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to extend the list of sanctions against Russia. The new list comprises 105 legal entities and 388 individuals, including a number of media employees.

Employees of TASS, RIA Novosti, Izvestiya and Rossiyskaya Gazeta publications, RUPTLY news agency, Vzglyad.ru, NTV, Channel 1, director general of the Rossiya Segodnya news agency Dmitry Kiselyov found themselves under sanctions.

TASS employees on the list include Washington correspondent Andrey Sitov, head of the agency’s bureau in South Africa Alexander Nechayev and TASS European countries department employee Andrey Surzhansky.

All blacklisted persons are banned from entering Ukraine and their assets in the country are frozen.
The blacklist comprised also the names of two Spanish correspondents, three BBC journalists and one reporter from Germany.

Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian Information Policy Minister Yury Stets admitted that the list of media representatives that came under Ukrainian sanctions is questionable and needs to be amended. After that, President Pyotr Poroshenko instructed the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council to exclude the names of Western journalists from the blacklist.