In Lutsk, journalist of “Avers” was blocked on the territory of SBU. The intelligence agency claims it was unlawful entry

Department of SBU in Volynska oblast claims that journalists of the local channel "Avers" comitted an unlawful entry to the territory of the Ukrainian intelligence agency, and started taking footage of the cars that were parked there. The Security Service of Ukraine requests the mass media to obtain preliminary consent when photographing or video recording on the territory of the agency. This was reported by SBU Department in Volynska oblast in their Facebook entry. According to SBU, the officers asked the journalists who came in through gates that were open for some time, to leave the territory, and the journalists refused. After this, the officers closed the gate and called the police. As “Volyn24” reported, the security guard blocked on the territory of the SBU parking lot the journalist of TV channel “Avers” Natalka Polishchuk and the cameraman of the channel. The security guard locked the gates and called the police. The media outlet reminds that SBU published the records of phone conversations of the leader of civil formation “Varta poriadku” Oleksandr Tyvodar, where he orders to spy on people and to purchase special equipment for this. One of the records is the conversation of Tyvodar about giving the video obtained this way to the TV channel “Avers”, in particular, to Natalia Moskovka. IMI media lawyer Roman Holovenko comments this case: “Understandably, the public is interested what cars SBU officers are using. Yet this information could be obtained without entry to the territory, which is normally fenced and gated (fence itself means that the territory is not for public use, in addition, we had a security guard here, so if their entry was taken as an attack against the building, it could end in a tragic way). On the other hand, in this case it should be verified if the territory of SBU was identified as a closed area under militarized security. The fact that the journalists were able to get in “while gates were temporarily open”, shows that security guards were not well-organized”.