An anti-war Russian journalist has recounted the dramatic night she escaped her home country with the help of seven cars and by just following stars in the absence of GPS.
Marina Ovsyannikova had raised an anti-war sign during a live broadcast in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ovsyannikova used to work for state-run Channel One TV and had fled from Moscow in March last year after she was put under house arrest for protesting against the Russian invasion.
She had raised a signboard reading “no war, stop the war; don’t believe the propaganda, they’re lying to you here” after bursting into a studio during a live news bulletin.
Revealing the harrowing ordeal she experienced with her daughter, Ovsyannikova said they planned their escape for three weeks while under house arrest and said Vladimir Putin’s government would not be able to keep her silent.
“It was a truly dramatic escape. My lawyer kept on saying ‘Marina run, flee you have to escape otherwise you will be locked and broken in the jail’,” she told CNN in an interview.
“However, I could not leave as my daughter was taken from me. And I could not leave without her.”
She said her daughter was staying with her father while she was under house arrest and she planned the escape with the help of journalists from non-profit Reporters Without Borders.
“It was quite a drama as we were crossing the territory of the Russian Federations by seven different cars and eventually the last car which we were using broke down somewhere in the silt,” she said.
She said they finally managed to get GPS signals late in the night and contacted people on the other side of the border who helped them get into France.
“It was just unbearable,” she said.
When asked if she still fears for the safety of her daughter and herself, she said: “Frankly, I do feel the danger.”
“However, I should say that I am not going to stay silent... I love life and I am not going to keep silent.”
Ovsyannikova was born in Odesa to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother. She had experienced the start of the first Chechen war in 1994.
The 44-year-old first spoke about her escape during a press conference in Paris on Friday organised by Reporters without Borders.
During the conference, she said her escape was so “chaotic” she forgot to remove the electronic bracelet put on her when she was under hourse arrest and only broke it off when she had changed to a second car.
“Russia is still my country, even if war criminals have power there. But I had no choice – it was either prison or exile. I’m very grateful to France, a free country, to have welcomed me.”
She was fined 30,000 roubles (£460) and charged with spreading false information about the Russian army under Russia’s law that prohibits people from condemning the war and referring to it as an “invasion”.
