Russia is investigating the illegal crossing of its border by Washington Post journalists who were embedded with Ukrainian troops who entered Kursk Region.
A report published by the US newspaper on Sunday describes how chief Ukraine correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, photographer Ed Ram, and Ukrainian activist Tetiana Burianova, who co-bylined the story, traveled to territories seized by Ukrainian forces to “witness firsthand” the conditions that remaining Russian civilians face there. Last Saturday, they visited the town of Sudzha, which is roughly 10km from the Ukrainian border.
“Russian law enforcement is studying the facts in connection with the actions of the American journalists,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on Monday morning, when asked about the report.
The journalists were escorted by Ukrainian soldiers, the report said. The newspaper claimed its journalists “saw no evidence that Ukraine’s military had looted or attacked civilians.”
The people under Ukrainian control were mostly elderly or disabled and “slept on the basement floor of a former school or sat quietly in its courtyard.” The Post said that Ukrainian soldiers were present for half of its interviews with civilians.
The report claimed that the Ukrainian military is providing food and water to the people remaining in the captured settlement.
While the Ukrainian troops apparently conducted themselves properly while accompanied by foreign journalists, there is evidence of wrongdoing on other occasions, including some incidents that appear to have been published by the offenders themselves.
Some soldiers helped themselves to goods at a grocery store in Sudzha, according to footage circulating online. In another video others harassed a confused elderly man, a 72-year-old refugee from Donbass, imitating Nazi soldiers and hurling insults at him. The man has been missing since being filmed by Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Zaoleshenka near Sudzha.
Russian officials and civilians who fled the area have accused Kiev’s forces of deliberately targeting civilians. One man claimed that Ukrainian soldiers opened fire on a car driven by his pregnant wife and fatally injuring her when the family was escaping the fighting in two vehicles.
Last week, Russia's Federal Security Service opened a criminal probe into Italian journalists Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini, who work for the broadcaster RAI, for traveling to Kursk Region with Ukrainian troops in a similar fashion to the Post crew.