American Journalist Detained in Ukraine Speaks Out After Release
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KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images(SLOVIANSK, Ukraine) — VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky is speaking out after being detained for three days in eastern Ukraine, saying his “release was as unexplained as my capture.”
In a post on VICE News’ website Friday, the American journalist says he was pulled out of a car at a checkpoint Monday night, “then blindfolded, beaten, and tied up with tape.”
“After spending hours alone on the floor of a damp cell with my hands tied behind my back and a hat pulled over my eyes, I was led into a room where I was accused of working for the CIA, FBI, and Right Sector, the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist group,” Ostrovsky recalls.
But, he notes, he “had it pretty easy” because he was released.
“In the four nights that I was held captive, a dozen other nameless detainees were ferried in and out of the cellar of the Ukraine state security (SBU) building by the pro-Russia militants who had taken it over,” Ostrovsky says.
“Most had been in that cellar far longer than I had. They had been there for up to two weeks, and are most likely still there now,” he adds.
Ostrovsky tweeted on Thursday that he had been released and was safe.
A day earlier, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the self-proclaimed “People’s Mayor” of Sloviansk, Ukraine, told ABC News that Ostrovsky was spreading false, one-sided information and needed to be taught otherwise.
Ostrovsky says in his post Friday that he found out after his release that Ponomarev “told journalists that we were being held as ‘bargaining chips’ in negotiations with the interim authorities in Kiev.”
“I don’t yet know what he got for my release, but I hope it wasn’t very much, because no one should be allowed to take hostages no matter what their political demands are,” Ostrovsky adds.
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