Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on May 5 announced that it had facilitated Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash's escape from Russia to France.
"I fled — I had no other choice. Journalism no longer exists in Russia," Barabash told reporters in Paris on May 5.
Barabash escaped house arrest on April 21. She was placed under house arrest by a Moscow court for posting "fake news" on her Facebook account about the war in Ukraine, her son Yurii Barabash said on Feb. 27.
RSF held a press conference alongside Barabash at its headquarters in Paris, announcing her whereabouts for the first time since she escaped house arrest on April 21.
"Her escape from Russia is one of the most perilous operations RSF has been involved in since the draconian Russian laws of March 2022. It sends a clear message to the Kremlin: free voices that dare to speak the truth about the war in Ukraine cannot be silenced," RSF Director General Thibaut Bruttin said.
Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin toughened its grip on dissent, passing laws in March 2022 that prohibit what authorities label as "false" criticism of Russia's war.
Barabash has Ukrainian ancestry and was born in Kharkiv.
"(You) bastards bomb a country, raze entire cities to the ground, kill hundreds of children, shoot at peaceful people for no reason, keep Mariupol under a blockade, deprive millions of people of a normal life, and force them to leave for foreign countries. For what? For the sake of friendship with Ukraine? You are Evil on a planetary scale," Barabash said in 2022.
She was detained for posting criticism of Russia's war on Facebook, Russian court documents say. Barabash could have faced up to 10 years in a Russian prison.
Russia has gone after journalists in Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Ukrainian Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023. She died after being tortured in Russian captivity. Roschyna's body was returned to Ukraine in February with missing organs.
Andrew Chakhoyan
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