A Brooklyn-based VICE reporter is safe and sound after being kidnapped in the small Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, the reporter and VICE News confirmed via Twitter Thursday.
“I’m out and safe. Thank you all for your support. Had no idea I had so many good friends,” Simon Ostrovsky tweeted.
“We are delighted to confirm that our collegue and friend @SimonOstrovsky has been released and is in good health,” Vice News tweeted.
Ostrovsky, a foreign correspondent for Vice News, has been covering the crisis in Ukraine for weeks.
He went off the grid Monday after a security checkpoint. Ostrovsky was in the region covering Crimea and was in the middle of a story about masked gunmen seizing government buildings when he was taken.
Stella Khorosheva, a spokeswoman for the Slovyansk insurgents under the pro-Russian leader Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, confirmed earlier this week that Ostrovsky was being held, but denied that he was a hostage.
“He’s with us. He’s fine,” Khorosheva told The Associated Press, adding that Ostrovsky was suspected of spying for the Right Sector, a far-right nationalist group that is despised by the pro-Russian forces.