Russian journalist told about his kidnapping together with German correspondent

In the evening of May 11, the correspondent of the oppositional Russian newspaper “Novaia Gazeta” Pavlo Kanygin and the German journalist Stefan Scholl were kidnapped by a group of representatives of the self-proclaimed «Donetsk People's Republic» (DPR) in Artemivsk (Donetsk oblast). They both were beaten and accused of cooperation with the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, and the Right Sector. They also did not like how Kanygin covered the referendum in the city. At first, they were taken to the central square of Artemivsk, where they were beaten, and then they were brought to an unknown checkpoint. They took away his clothes, questioned and threatened him, and demanded a ransom of $30 thousand but would not let him anybody, friends or colleagues, to get the money. They also promised they would exchange him for the arrested activists. They searched his personal effects and cell phone and threatened they would take him out to the woods and shoot him. At last, they rendered him unconscious with a hook to his jaw, and when he regained consciousness he found himself in one of Donetsk hotels.