In mid-March, after the outbreak of the offensive in Ukraine, Marina Ovsiannikova interrupted the evening of the main Russian state channel Pervy Kanal, where she had worked for almost 20 years. She had waved a banner calling for an end to the fighting and urging the Russians “not to believe the propaganda.”
The journalist faced ten years in prison after being charged in August with “spreading false information” about the army, but escaped Russia in early October, thanks to the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“There was supposed to be a court hearing, but my lawyer started telling me off the record that I should leave before the hearing, because I had no chance of winning my case,” he told BFMTV on Friday.
With his lawyer, in September, he contacted RSF. She “said to us: ‘I’m thinking of leaving Moscow, can RSF help me?’ RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire on the air: “We made sure that the whole operation could go well. It was obviously a big problem.”
“We changed vehicles several times”
Several problems arose for the operation to be a success: “Marina was placed under house arrest, she had an electronic bracelet” and “there were nearby poutinists in her house who could report her if they saw her leave,” explains Christophe Deloire.
The journalist, therefore, “left on a Friday night because, although [la Russie] It is a very intense police apparatus, there are many weaknesses and on Friday night the police are drinking and watching the cameras less, less the alarms of the electronic bracelets…” says the RSF general secretary.
This situation “allowed us to rush into this little system glitch and walk away.”
Marina Ovsyannikova also carries pliers with her so that she can cut her electronic bracelet after a while.
Along the way, “we changed vehicles several times, people were transporting us. I cannot say exactly which paths I went through, ”she underlines. For security, and to protect the people who helped her, she does not say which border she crossed, nor what her route was before arriving in France, which she offered him asylum.
“The equivalent of the great crossings of the Berlin Wall”
But along the way there were “problems, we got lost,” she remembers, I was crying, I was ready to go back, give up and go to prison.”
Indeed, one of the borrowed vehicles got stuck and “there were border police patrols, so I had to cross a field, a forest, swampy waters to be able to cross the border or someone was waiting for me,” he explains, “in the end it was exit”.
Christophe Deloire repeatedly underlines the danger of this trip, “there were enormous risks, on many occasions”. According to him, “in recent months what he has achieved is the equivalent of the great crossings of the Berlin Wall, the biggest leaks, it has been an extraordinary story.”
Marina assures that she does not regret her gesture on Russian television this day in March, and declares that “I can never thank journalists without borders enough for helping me.”
But he adds that “he lost everything to be able to tell the truth: I lost part of my family, my son and my mother no longer speak to me, I lost my house, my job”, and today “he has to start over.”
Source: BFM TV
