Italian state TV recalls journalists who violated Russian border

Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini traveled into Kursk Region with Ukrainian forces

Italy’s RAI broadcaster has recalled two of its reporters after they accompanied Ukrainian troops on a cross-border raid into Russia’s Kursk Region. Earlier on Saturday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) opened a criminal probe into the incident.

“The company decided to make journalist Stefania Battistini and cameraman Simone Traini return temporarily to Italy, solely to ensure personal safety and security,” RAI said in a statement on Saturday. The two reporters will fly back to Milan on Sunday, the broadcaster added.

On Wednesday, RAI aired a TV report on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Region, in which a four-person crew of journalists were embedded with Kiev’s forces and drove deep into Russian territory. In the clip, Battistini and Traini could be seen as their car drove past what appeared to be destroyed Western-supplied Ukrainian armor, before they arrived at the Russian town of Sudzha, which sustained significant damage during the fighting.

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The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Italy’s ambassador to Russia, Cecilia Piccioni, on Friday to lodge a “strong protest” over the report. The film crew “illegally entered the territory of the Russian Federation to cover the criminal terrorist attack by Ukrainian militants in the Kursk region,” the ministry said.

It added that the Italian reporters “used their presence in our country to whitewash the crimes of the Kiev regime” and accused them of a “gross violation of Russian legislation and elementary rules of journalistic ethics.”

On Saturday, the FSB announced that it had opened a criminal investigation into “foreign journalists Simone Traini and Stefania Battistini, who illegally crossed the State Border of the Russian Federation.” The agency also said that it had determined that CNN journalist Nick Paton Walsh had traveled to Sudzha, and that a “procedural decision” would soon be made against all three.

Ukrainian forces launched an attack on Kursk Region last week, using thousands of troops to conduct the largest incursion into Russia since the start of the conflict. Russia has denounced the assault as a provocation and accused Kiev of targeting Russian civilians. 

READ MORE: Ukrainian attack ruined ‘secret’ peace talks – WaPo

According to reports by American media outlets, Ukraine began planning the incursion in 2023 and used 10,000 troops who otherwise would have been deployed to bolster the country’s battered frontline forces later this year. 

The incursion has cost Kiev up to 3,160 troops and several hundred units of military hardware, including 44 tanks, 43 APCs and three US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. “The operation to destroy the Ukrainian armed formations continues,” the ministry added.