Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist’s arrest cannot be supported if related to his work, Kremlin spokesperson says

“We do not have any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about where the arrest of the jour­nal­ist took place. We sim­ply do not know this,” Mr. Peskov said, com­ment­ing on alle­ga­tions that Mr. Maže­j­ka might have been arrest­ed in Moscow. 

“We do not know for cer­tain where he was arrest­ed, by whom and what he is accused of,” Mr. Peskov was quot­ed as say­ing by the news agency TASS. “We are not sure that he was arrest­ed in the ter­ri­to­ry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, we sim­ply do not have this infor­ma­tion.”

Mr. Peskov drew “par­tic­u­lar atten­tion” to the fact that Mr. Maže­j­ka is a cit­i­zen of Belarus. “So, of course, de jure, we have no oppor­tu­ni­ty to make any inquiries through our diplo­mat­ic mis­sion, let alone to defend [his] inter­ests,” he added. 

Asked if Mr. Putin knew about Mr. Mažejka’s arrest, Mr. Peskov replied that the Russ­ian pres­i­dent received digests “con­tain­ing all wide­ly pub­li­cized infor­ma­tion.” 

Accord­ing to Mr. Peskov, the Krem­lin expects that access will be restored to the web­site of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da.

“So far we can­not say that there is a feel­ing that we have been heard, since Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da in Belarus is still blocked. But we will con­tin­ue to work with the Belaru­sian side,” Mr. Peskov said. 

He point­ed out that the Krem­lin had ear­li­er made clear its stance on the block. 

“We do not agree with it and expect that these restric­tions will be removed and that our respectable pub­li­ca­tion will be able to freely oper­ate in the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus, our ally,” he said.

“Unlike many oth­er sit­u­a­tions, we have part­ner­ship rela­tions with Belarus and there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the close dia­logue between our coun­tries to sub­stan­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate our dis­ap­proval of such restric­tions in rela­tion to our media out­let. This is what we will do,” Mr. Peskov not­ed. 

On Octo­ber 2, Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da report­ed that Mr. Maže­j­ka had been arrest­ed and placed in the deten­tion cen­ter on Akresci­na Street in Min­sk.

Mr. Maže­j­ka is the author of an inter­view with a for­mer class­mate of Andrej Zieĺcer, a Min­sk man who was killed by offi­cers of the Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty (KGB) dur­ing a raid on his apart­ment on Sep­tem­ber 28.

Mr. Zieĺcer, a 31-year-old IT work­er, is believed to have fatal­ly wound­ed a KGB offi­cer before being shot dead inside his apart­ment.

In the inter­view, which was post­ed on the night of Sep­tem­ber 28, a woman who went to school togeth­er with Mr. Zieĺcer described him as a good per­son who “always stood up for truth.”

On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 29, the web­site of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da stopped being acces­si­ble to users by order of the Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion min­istry.