Russian court decides to arrest in absentia a Romanian journalist who went to Kursk, occupied by Ukraine

A Russian court ordered on Thursday the arrest in absentia of the Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu, accused of entering together with the Ukrainian troops in the Russian province of Kursk, where the Ukrainian army occupied a territory in a surprise offensive launched on August 6."The Romanian citizen Mircea Barbu, together with unidentified persons from the territory of Ukraine, entered the Russian Federation with the objective of making a report about the Ukrainian invasion of August 6, 2024 in the Sudja district of the Kursk region," reports the Leninski court in Kursk in a statement.Against the Romanian journalist, already placed under domestic and international prosecution by the Russian authorities, the accusation of illegal crossing of the Russian state border was formulated, for which he is liable to a sentence of up to five years in prison in Russia. The preventive arrest measure will be applied following detention on Russian territory or extradition from a third country, the same court also mentions.Mircea Barbu, who works for HotNews.ro, is the 15th journalist on whose name the Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant after the launch of the Ukrainian offensive in the Russian border province of Kursk.The most recent case of this kind was announced on October 11, when the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal case against journalist Nick Paton Walsh, an employee of the American television station CNN.Moscow has previously warned that it keeps track of all illegal border crossings by foreign journalists and that it will not let these actions go unanswered, while reminding foreign media representatives that they need accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to report from Russia.   The President of the Senate, PNL leader Nicolae Ciuca, declared on Thursday that "the freedom of the press suffers a new blow", noting that the Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu was convicted by a Russian court, in absentia, for his courage to tell the truth from Kursk.Ciuca said that he joins those who condemn the blatant violation of human and media rights."When I said that Romania is, after the Republic of Moldova, the next target of the propaganda and the hybrid war led by the Kremlin, I was referring to such cases. Today, the freedom of the press suffers a new blow! The Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu was sentenced by a Russian court, in absentia, for the courage to report the truth in Kursk. Such decisions are not only a threat to individual freedom, but also a cynical attempt to silence the voices that denounce the abuses", Ciuca wrote on Facebook.He conveyed that the right to truth and freedom must be defended.