REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, Pro-Russian rebels on Wednesday freed two reporters from Western-backed Hromadske TV in Kiev they had abducted two days earlier, the Internet-based television station said.

Reporter Anastasia Stanko and cameraman Illya Bezkaravayny went missing in Ukraine's eastern Lugansk region, which along with neighbouring Donetsk have proclaimed their independence from Kiev and seek to join Russia.

"We were not beaten or tortured -- only threatened," the station quoted Stanko as saying.

Lugansk separatist leader Valery Bolotov said the journalists were freed after the heads of Russia's three main state-controlled television stations personally intervened on their behalf earlier Wednesday.

Bolotov had earlier accused the two of espionage and working for the Ukrainian authorities.

The three Russian media chiefs said in their letter to Bolotov that reporters did not deserve to be help captive "regardless of their (political) views," Russia's state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The unpredictable spells of fighting that began in the eastern rustbelt in mid-April have already claimed the lives of an Italian photographer and several reporters from both Russia and Ukraine.

Ikuti Whatsapp Channel Republika