A Brooklyn-based journalist missing since Tuesday while covering the crisis in Ukraine has been released, his news organization said.
VICE News tweeted "We are delighted to confirm that our colleague and friend @SimonOstrovsky has been released and is in good health."
Ostrovsky had been working in the eastern city of Slovyansk.
The fluent Russian-speaker, who also holds an Israeli passport, was covering the crisis in Ukraine for weeks and was reporting about the groups of masked gunmen seizing government buildings in eastern Ukrainian cities one after another.
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Stella Khorosheva, a spokeswoman for pro-Russia insurgents in Slovyansk, had said that Ostrovsky was being held at a local branch of the Ukrainian security service that gunmen seized more than a week ago.
She said he was suspected of spying for the Right Sector, a nationalist group that has occupied two buildings in Kiev for months, "and other enemy organizations."
Since November, Ukraine has been engulfed in its biggest political crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Months of anti-government protests in Kiev culminated in President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing to Russia in late February.
Ukraine's acting government has accused Russia of orchestrating the unrest in eastern Ukraine, which it fears Moscow could use as a pretext for an invasion. Last month, Russia annexed Crimea weeks after seizing control of the Black Sea peninsula.
Copyright The Associated Press
