On 28 April 2014, Donbas’s patriotic volunteer defense batallion held an operation in which they thwarted an attempt to kidnap three journalists of France-press near Kransoarmiysk (Donetsk Oblast). The taxi driver, a previously convicted active member of the pro-Russian separatist movement from Krasnoarmiysk, was planning to take the group of journalists to a separatist base and later transferring them to the separatist stronghold city of Kramatorsk.