Journalist Ekaterina Barabash describes her harrowing escape from Russia
Reporters Without Borders calls it 'one of the most perilous operations' it's been involved in
When journalist Ekaterina Barabash started planning her escape from Russia, she couldn't bear to slip away forever without first saying goodbye to her elderly mother.
"I had to tell her before my escape. She was the only one," Barabash, 63, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
"I was sure that it would be me who would calm her, and I thought she would be crying. But everything happened in the opposite. I was crying, and my mother was calming me."
Barabash, a former Radio France Internationale contributor who later worked with the independent outlet Republic, was on house arrest and facing imprisonment for speaking out against Russia's invasion of Ukraine when she decided to make a run for it.
Now, she is safe in Paris after a clandestine getaway orchestrated with the help of Reporters Without Borders, also known by its French acronym, RSF.
She's one of many Russian journalists and activists who have fled the country since 2022, when the government outlawed public expression that challenged its official narrative about its war in Ukraine.
"Her escape was one of the most perilous operations RSF has been involved in since Russia's Draconian laws of March 2022," RSF director Thibaut Bruttin said Monday during a press conference with Barabash at the group's Paris headquarters.
"At one point, we thought she might be dead."
'I'm a journalist, and I have to tell the truth'
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it claimed it was trying to liberate and "de-Nazify" the country.
Barabash didn't buy it.
"I understood that I couldn't keep silent," she said. "I'm a journalist, and I have to tell the truth."
Her motivation was as personal as it was professional. Barabash's son and grandson live in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. She, herself, was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city.
"When you imagine how missiles, bombs … [could] attack your son's house, you cannot keep silent," she said. "It hurts, and your heart is going to break."
So over the next two years, she wrote several Facebook posts criticizing the invasion.
"So you [expletive] bombed the country, razed entire cities to the ground, killed a hundred children, shot civilians for no reason, blockaded Mariupol, deprived millions of people of a normal life and forced them to leave for foreign countries?" one post read. "All for the sake of friendship with Ukraine?"
In February of this year, Russian authorities arrested Barabash upon her return from the Berlin International Film Festival.
She was charged with spreading false information about Russia's military, branded a foreign agent and put on house arrest pending trial. She faced a sentence of five to 10 years.
She says she's not sure why authorities waited so many years to come after her.
"I cannot understand that part," she said. "Maybe they decided: It's her turn now."
'A great adventure'
Barabash wouldn't get into specific details of how she got out of Russia, for fear of jeopardizing others using similar tactics.
"I only can say that it was a great adventure," she said, with "many dangerous moments."
She fled on April 21, and to the outside world, it seemed as if she'd just disappeared.
She says left her house, tore off her ankle monitoring device and rendezvoused with a "special car" that was waiting for her. They then travelled more than 2,800 kilometres, using clandestine routes to evade surveillance.
At one point, she says, the plan went awry, and she was forced to go into hiding, cut off from her contacts in Europe. That's when Bruttin feared the worst.
"I had to disappear. I had to turn off all the smartphones, all gadgets," Barabash said.
During that period of isolation, she says she lived in fear of getting caught, but pushed through it, staying focused on her ultimate goal.
"I had an aim. I had a target. I had to be at freedom. So as I began this, I had to finish it," she said. "I had to be lucky and strong."
Once she was out of the country, she met with Reporters Without Borders officials, who took her to Paris, got her a visa, connected her with a psychologist, and are now helping her apply for asylum.
During a press conference on Monday with the organization, she condemned the lack of freedoms in Russia, saying there's no longer any such thing as a Russian journalist.
"There is no culture in Russia, there is no politics. It's only war," she said, decrying state censorship. "Journalism cannot exist under totalitarianism."
According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that tracks political arrests, 1,240 people in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea have faced charges since 2022 because of their antiwar stance, and 389 are in custody right now.
At least 38 journalists remain imprisoned in Russia, according to Reporters Without Borders.
As she settles into her new life far from home, Barabash thinks back to her final moments with her mother.
"She told me that I had chosen the right way or the left way, knowing that my immigration is much better than prison," she said.
"She's 96 and I understand very well that I'll never see her again. It's a great tragedy."
With files from The Associated Press. Interview with Ekaterina Barabash produced by Leïla Ahouman
