Ukrainian journalists held up at border in Homel for several hours

Belarusian border guards wanted to ask questions to a journalist Dobrota.

Reporters of the Ukrainian TV channel, who arrived to the celebration of the death anniversary of one of Euromaidan activists, a Belarusian national Mikhail Zhyzneuski, when entering Belarus were held at the border for three hours.

January 22 is the anniversary of Mikhail Zhyzneuski’s death in Kyiv. He is a Hero of the Heavenly Hundred. Representatives of the TV channel 1+1 were on the way to the village Stsyah Pracy (Znamya truda), Homel region, where Mikhail is buried.

As BelaPAN was told by the reporter of the TV channel, Marichka Padalko, “Belarusian border guards had questions to a journalist, Valentina Dobrota. They said that she had been allegedly banned entry to Russia. That is why the border guards had doubts whether she could be allowed to enter in Belarus, though the journalist had been accredited by the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.”

- The issues of accreditation were cleared up for a long time, then it took lots of time for the border guards to find out how to bring in the video equipment. Eventually, we were allowed to cross the border after three hours passed, – Padalko noted.

Now the ceremonies in remembrance of Zhyzneuski are held at the grave. Activists and volunteers of Euromaidan from Kyiv, Belarusian journalists, public activists and relatives of Mikhail Zhyzneuski are taking part in them. On the morning representatives of the Ukrainian Embassy in Belarus visited the grave of the Hero of the Heavenly Hundred, they laid flowers, a wreath, and visited his mother in Homel.