Ukrainian Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets has confirmed that two journalists of the Russian TV channel LifeNews, correspondent Yelizaveta Khramtsova and camera operator Natalya Kalysheva, were deported from Ukraine on Friday.

"This is not a freedom of speech violation, is it? The so-called journalists from Russia's LifeNews have been politely kicked out of the Ukrainian territory through the Synkivka checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Russian border, with a ban on entering Ukraine for the next five years," Stets said on Facebook.

It was reported earlier that the Ukrainian Security Service had detained a LifeNews filming crew for what it described as activities harming Ukraine's national interests and unrelated to journalism.

"I confirm that Ukrainian Security Service officials have detained two LifeNews journalists in Kyiv. Their permits to stay in Ukraine have been cancelled and they will be expelled from the Ukrainian territory in the near future. They will also be barred from entering Ukraine for five years," Markiyan Lubkivsky, an adviser to the Ukrainian Security Service chief, told Interfax.

Lubkivsky did not specify under what circumstances the journalists were detained.

The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded that the LifeNews journalists detained in Kyiv be immediately freed.