A British journalist reporting for a Russian television channel from conflict-torn eastern Ukraine went missing on Wednesday, with Moscow alleging he and another journalist were captured by Kiev's troops. Graham Phillips, a British national who works as a stringer for state-owned channel RT (formerly Russia Today), went to cover intense fighting around Donetsk airport Tuesday, but RT has had no contact with him since the early hours of Wednesday, it said.
Russia's foreign ministry said Phillips disappeared together with a cameraman for Anna-News, an obscure agency based in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia that produces pro-Russian reports from the Ukraine conflict. "According to available information, they have been captured by Ukrainian forces," the ministry statement said, calling it a "targeted provocation of Ukrainian authorities towards independent international journalists."
Also on Wednesday, the US ambassador to Ukraine wrote on Twitter that a Ukrainian journalist had been abducted by pro-Russian rebels. The Donetsk-based website 62.ua quoted sources as saying that he was abducted from a hotel while working for CNN. "We deplore the abduction of journalist Anton Skiba in Donetsk and call for his immediate release. Separatists' kidnapping must end," the ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt wrote.