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 had to get down and cross muddy fields in complete darkness.
“There were just stars around us and there was no GPS coverage. The person who was accompanying us literally was trying to make the way following the stars,” she said.
Recalling her conversation at that time, she said: “He would say ‘hey Marina look here is the tail of big dipper’. I would be just nervously laughing thinking what kind of tail, what is the big dipper, where are we.”
She said they finally managed to get GPS signal late in the night and contacted people on the other side of the border who helped them walk across. “It was just unbearable,” she said.
She has not specified the route she took out of Russia, beyond saying that people finally helped her get into France.
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”.
Speaking about Russian citizens, she told CNN that people are “afraid as Putin is spreading out his tentacles” with the enforcement of forces across the world to crack down on any kind of protest.
“People are afraid to do anything because if they come out with a ‘no to war’ sign first, they would be fined and if the second time they are caught, there are criminal convictions against them.”
