KIEV, Jan. 30 – A television journalist was hospitalized with a brain concussion and multiple injuries on Friday in Poltava following an apparently four-hour detention, assault and interrogation by police, a news agency reported Sunday.

Yuriy Stetsenko, 25, who works for a regional office of Channel 5, an independent television news channel, said police attacked him and took him - unconscious - to a local police department.

“Two people ran to me… and several times hit me in the head. I lost consciousness,” Stetsenko told Ukrayinski Novyny news agency.

He says when Stetsenko woke up, he was sitting in a car driven by Artem Mochalov, an officer from the criminal police who took him to the local police department.

“They dragged me in their office on the second floor, and turned off my cell phone,” Stetsenko said, adding that the physical assault had continued for four hours.

By assaulting the journalist, police has been apparently seeking a confession from him about the allegedly stolen farming tractor.

After the journalist showed his Channel 5 ID, police officers had launched in response, Stetsenko said, adding that the officers had continued to hit him in the head and his back.

After his release, Stetsenko was hospitalized at a local hospital with brain concussion and multiple bruises in his stomach and his back.

Yuriy Sulayev, the head of public relations department at Poltava police, confirmed that Stetsenko had been briefly detained, and added an internal investigation is underway.

The development is the latest in attacks on reporters in Ukraine, a country whose government has been accused of attempting to restrict democracy and the freedom of speech.

It comes after repeated assurances from the office of President Viktor Yanukovych last month that detentions of journalists are “unacceptable.”

Vitaliy Sych, the editor of Korrespondent magazine, which had recently run an interview with opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, was stopped near his office on December 12 without apparent cause, and searched by police.

The same day a special police unit has detained prominent journalist, Mustafa Nayem, and took him to local police office. He was later released after involvement of lawmakers.

Nayem has a history of uneasy relations with Yanukovych. At least on one occasion, in response to a sharp question, Yanukovych had warned Nayem that the journalist “was not his friend.”

Ever since the election of Yanukovych to the presidency in February, the pressure on journalists in Ukraine has been increasing with police, and even local officials, attacking them.

The pressure reached a high point in August that was highlighted by the disappearance of Vasyl Klymentyev, the editor of Noviy Stil newspaper, in Kharkiv.

Anatoliy Mohyliov, the interior minister, later in August admitted that Klymentyev was probably dead, and that police officers may have been involved in his death.

Serhiy Liovochkin, the chief of staff at the Yanukovych administration, responding to the attacks in December, said the president “believes this was unacceptable” to use police force against the journalists. (tl/ez)