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 yesterday, but RT has had no contact with him since the early hours today, 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."
"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.
RT said that it lost contact with Phillips after receiving a text message saying "All is fine" at around 2:00 am. It said he was not reporting for RT at the time.
Anna-News today said that the two journalists were "captured by Fascists," giving only the first name of its own reporter, Vadim.
It also quoted another journalist named as Maksim Dimitrov as saying that Phillips had gone ahead to the airport last evening and "most likely ran into an ambush" but "we presume he is alive."
Phillips, who writes on Twitter as GrahamWPhillips, last tweeted on Tuesday evening, saying: "There's been some heavy shelling and I'm right by Donetsk airport as it looks to be an active night here."
Russia's foreign ministry called for the journalists "immediate release", adding that "they say 'truth hurts'. And that is what Kiev fears." It said that two other journalists were also detained overnight but did not name them.
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