SOCHI, May 18. /TASS/. The situation surrounding the arrest of Chief Editor of the RIA Novosti Ukraine news agency Kirill Vyshinsky is unprecedented, Russian President Vladimir Putin said following talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.

"This is unprecedented," he said. "They seek to charge him with high treason for what he did openly, while fulfilling his professional duties. I haven’t seen such things for a long time, I cannot recall anything like that. We touched upon this issue, as well as other issues related to Ukraine, but I would rather refrain from going into details," Putin added.

Merkel, in turn, said that she used the meeting with Putin as an opportunity to discuss difficulties that journalists, including those working in Russia, had to face.

Vyshinsky case

On May 15, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) carried out a large-scale operation against RIA Novosti Ukraine staff members, accusing them of high treason. The news agency’s Chief Editor Kirill Vyshinsky was detained outside his home early on Tuesday. Soon after that, searches were conducted in the news agency’s Kiev office and press center, as well as in some journalists’ apartments. At the same time, the SBU issued a statement claiming that "a network of media structures, which Moscow used for carrying out a hybrid war" against Kiev had been exposed.