Vitaly Shevchenko and Andrei Bazvluka, two television journalists from Lita-M, a small television company in Kharkhiv, Ukraine, have been reported missing by their colleagues. Fellow correspondents last saw the pair in the city of Grozny on 11 August 1996, during heavy fighting between Russian federal troops and Chechen fighters who had seized control of the […]
Vitaly Shevchenko and Andrei Bazvluka, two television journalists
from Lita-M, a small television company in Kharkhiv, Ukraine,
have been reported missing by their colleagues. Fellow
correspondents last saw the pair in the city of Grozny on 11
August 1996, during heavy fighting between Russian federal troops
and Chechen fighters who had seized control of the city on 6
August. The two journalists had travelled from their native
Ukraine to the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya before
warfare resumed in the capital.
A third journalist, Yelena Petrova, a senior executive of Lita-M,
has failed to contact her studio for the last two weeks,
according to a colleague. However, an anonymous informant called
the Kharkhiv station this morning and claimed that Petrova was
being held by security agents of the DGB, the Moscow-backed
Chechen government’s special forces, in a bank building in the
Achkhoi-Martan district outside of Grozny.
