Marina Ovsyannikova, the former editor of Russian state television who interrupted live news broadcasts to protest the outbreak of war in Ukraine, has spoken of her “chaotic” escape from house arrest in Moscow and how she fled across Europe to seek asylum in France. .

“I didn’t want to emigrate until the very end,” Ovsyannikova said at a press conference in Paris with the journalistic organization Reporters Without Borders. “Russia remains my country, even if war criminals are in power there. But there was no choice – either prison or exile. I am very grateful to France, a free country, for accepting me,” she said, according to The Guardian.

Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, which helped organize the escape, codenamed Evelyn, compared it to “the most famous crossings over the Berlin Wall.”

Ovsyannikova, 44, who was born in Ukraine, attracted international attention in March after storming into the studios of Channel One, her employer at the time, during a live news broadcast to denounce the war in Ukraine, holding a placard that read ” no war.”

She was then fined 30,000 rubles (£460) for ignoring protest laws.

She continued to protest against the war even after being fired from Channel One.

Last August, she was accused of spreading false information about the Russian military for displaying a poster reading “Putin is a criminal, his soldiers are fascists” during a solo protest on the banks of the Moscow River opposite the Kremlin.

The journalist was later forced to wear an electronic bracelet on her ankle and placed under house arrest in Moscow, where she was supposed to await trial. If found guilty, she faces up to 10 years in prison.

She ran away from home with the child on Friday night, “when all the law enforcement officers had finished the work week and were in rest mode.” She calculated that on the weekend there was less chance that she would be followed immediately.

About the trip from Moscow through Russia, she said: “I traveled in so many different directions that I don’t even know which direction I went, I changed seven different vehicles.”

Ovsyannikova did not specify which Russian border they were crossing, but she told how, before reaching the destination, the car they were traveling in got stuck in the mud in the field. (full on The Guardian)