A producer from state-owned news channel RT's Ruptly video agency has become the latest Russian journalist to be deported from Ukraine amid increasing tensions in that country's media environment.
Alina Eprimian, a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, had been covering a protest against the mobilization of Ukrainian forces in town of Rakoshyno in western Ukraine last week when local reporters noticed her presence and reported it to the Ukrainian Security Service, RT reported.
"I entered [Ukraine] on a U.S. passport, and they are telling me to leave on the basis that I have a Russian passport," Eprimian tweeted on Friday.
Eprimian said that she was interrogated by the Ukrainian Security Service and that all her footage was deleted.
Eprimian is the second RT journalist to be kicked out of Ukraine in the recent weeks. RT reported on July 25 that a British contributor, Graham Phillips, had been deported from Ukraine and banned from re-entering the country for three years after being arrested near the Donetsk airport during clashes between Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Journalists from Russian state-owned media outlets such as LifeNews and channels run by the All-Russia State Television & Radio Broadcasting Company have been detained and deported from Ukraine on different occasions since the outbreak of the crisis.
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