The Russian TV editor who mocked Putin reveals her incredible escape from Moscow

Heroic Russian TV editor Marina Ovsyannikova, who staged an anti-war protest live on state TV, has revealed how she fled her homeland and crossed a muddy border overnight to safety in the West.

Ovsyannikova, 44, humiliated Vladimir Putin by storming onto the set of Russian state broadcaster Channel One’s flagship evening news program to hold a banner reading: ‘You are being lied to here’ and ‘Stop the war!’

The former Channel One editor was told she faced up to ten years in jail and decided to flee house arrest with her 11-year-old daughter Trina.

Appearing publicly in France for the first time since he fled in October last year, he revealed that his lawyer had told him: “Run, run from Russia, you only have a few days left before the trial.” They will definitely put you in jail.

Despite finding safety, Ovsyannikova said she still fears for her life after the deaths of other Russians abroad.

Ovsyannikova said France-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières; RSF) helped her escape, using seven different vehicles and walking across the border into a forest at night.

She said she chose the night of Friday to Saturday to escape because “this is a time when all law enforcement officers are usually on leave, sitting in their dachas.” [country houses] with vodka and barbecues’ and hoped they wouldn’t rush to find her.

She did not reveal where she and her daughter escaped from.

“We had two days to get out of the territory of Russia,” he said.

‘Thank God it worked. I can’t say which way we went, but I can say that we changed seven cars in the process.

It was only when they were in the second car that he remembered that he had forgotten to cut with scissors the electronic tag that a Russian court had ordered him to use, which could alert police to his flight.

‘Right now we were on the run [from home]there was so much nervousness,’ he said.

Ovsyannikova described how one of the cars she used to escape got stuck in the mud, forcing her to flee on foot without any form of satellite navigation.

‘We literally jumped in a field. It was dark. We were running across a field, seeing nothing ahead of us.

“We had to navigate by the stars and it was a real challenge,” he told a news conference at RSF headquarters in Paris.

She said they were constantly at risk of being caught and dragged back to Moscow by the Russian authorities, where she would have been publicly humiliated.

“We were hiding from the lights of the border guards and from the tractors that were driving by, but we finally made it and reached the border.”

Part of the rescue team was waiting for her on the other side of the border.

“It ended more or less well,” he told a news conference.

But the 44-year-old mother of two stressed that she had been reluctant to leave Russia.

“It was still my country, even if the war criminals had seized power, but they gave me no choice: it was prison or emigration,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron offered Ovsyannikova asylum a day after her televised protest and she now lives among several safe houses in France with her daughter.

Ovsyannikova said: “I am very grateful to France, a free country, for welcoming me.”

Despite finding asylum in the West, he said he still fears for his life and that Putin’s agents warned him about a poisoning or a car accident.

Of course I fear for my life. Every time I talk to my friends in Russia, they ask me ‘Which do you prefer, Novichok, pollonium or a car accident?’ she said, referring to the different assassination methods allegedly used by Russian security services.

Ovsyannikova said that she faced a very difficult childhood: her family’s home in Chechnya was destroyed during a previous war there, and that this motivated her to protest against the invasion of Ukraine.

“I was right in the middle of the propaganda bubble,” he said. “I looked for a way to pierce this bubble.”

Ovsyannikova faced criticism from some quarters for having supported state propaganda for years before her protest.

She admitted she was a knowing complicit for years, but buried her head in the sand, “taking refuge in the everyday life of friends and family” and was only shaken by the “enormous shock” of the war.

She moved to Germany after her initial TV protest, but returned after three months and held a one-woman protest near the Kremlin, holding a sign reading “Putin is a murderer”, which led to her arrest.

RSF chief Christophe Deloire said he had contacted them shortly before deciding to apply.

“It was an extraordinary escape,” he said. His evasion makes one think of the most famous escapes through the Berlin Wall.

Ovsyannikova said she lives in hope of one day seeing Russia’s leaders face a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

“I think this regime is living its last days, but I don’t know how long this war and this regime will last.”

“But it must end with a total victory for Ukraine or there will be no future for Russia,” he said.

He added: ‘I would like to express unlimited support for the people of Ukraine.

They have been fighting for their land, for our future, for the future of the entire civilized world for almost a year.

Ovsyannikova has since accepted an invitation to seek asylum in France that was issued personally by President Emmanuel Macron.

The journalist has also written a 200-page book on Putin’s propaganda media that will be published in both English and French.

Her 18-year-old son has stayed in Moscow with her ex-husband, an employee of the state propaganda station RT.

Just before she disappeared, Ovsyannikova posted a video showing her ankle badge that she had to wear while under house arrest.

She said: ‘Dear Federal Prison Service staff… Tag Putin with a bracelet like this.

“It is he, and not me, who should be cut off from society and tried for the genocide of the people of Ukraine.”