Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash resurfaced in Paris on Monday following a daring escape from Moscow last month after being put under house arrest and facing a 10-year prison sentence for posts condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it helped Barabash orchestrate her adrenaline-packed getaway: The outspoken war critic tore off her electronic monitoring tag and “traveled over 2,800km using clandestine routes” to evade surveillance.
“Her escape was one of the most perilous operations RSF has been involved in since Russia’s draconian laws of March 2022,” RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin told a press conference with Barabash at the RSF headquarters in Paris. “At one point, we thought she might be dead.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Barabash, 63, vehemently condemned the lack of freedoms in Russia while detailing her escape.
“There is no culture in Russia… There is no politics… It’s only war,” she said, adding that those unwilling to submit to state censorship either lived in exile or were imprisoned.
Barabash said the very concept of a “Russian journalist” no longer made sense. “There are no Russian journalists,” she said. “Journalism cannot exist under totalitarianism.”
The Facebook posts that landed her in legal jeopardy were written between 2022 and 2023, lambasting Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
“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? All for the sake of friendship with Ukraine?” one post read.
Russian authorities arrested the veteran journalist and film critic, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, upon her return from the Berlinale film festival in February.
She was charged with spreading “fake news” about Russia’s military, and branded a “foreign agent.”
Barabash was then put under house arrest.
On April 21, she disappeared.
Barabash said she crossed multiple borders, using covert channels coordinated by RSF, and spent two weeks in hiding and then crossed the border on April 26, her birthday.
The hardest part was her inability to contact her 96-year-old mother, whom she had to leave behind.
“I just understood that. I’d never see her,” Barabash said, adding they both decided that not seeing her while being free was better than a Russian prison.
Barabash’s son and grandson remain in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. She has not been able to see them since the war started because “I have a Russian passport,” she said.
Still, her spirits remained undefeated.
Brutin said during Barabash’s escape, “she sang George Brassens.”
Barabash thanked the “many people” and the RSF team for helping her gain freedom.
“I don’t know their names,” she said.
Their identities were kept confidential for their protection.
The former Radio France Internationale contributor, who later worked with independent outlet Republic, hopes to seek asylum and resume work with exiled Russian-language media. She does not yet have a French work permit, but RSF says she holds a six-month visa and is in the process of regularizing her status.
“Now I’m here and I think it will not be [an] easy way to begin [a] new life. I’m not very young. I’m young ... but not very,” she said in a self-deprecating way.
Barabash joins a growing wave of Russian journalists in exile — more than 90 media outlets have fled to the EU and neighboring countries since the war began, according to RSF, which ranks Russia 171st out of 180 countries in its 2025 World Press Freedom Index.
After the press conference, Barabash told The Associated Press that for her, a Russian prison was “worse than death.”
“If you want to be a journalist, you have to [live in] exile,” she said. If you want [to] stay in Russia as a journalist, you are not a journalist. That is it. It’s very simple.”
At least 38 journalists remain imprisoned in Russia, and independent reporting is functionally extinct inside the country, RSF said.
Still, “free voices that dare to speak the truth about the war in Ukraine cannot be silenced,” Brutin said.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would make a decision about how the US government would refer to the body of water commonly known as the Persian Gulf when he visits Arab states next week. Trump told reporters at the White House that he expects his hosts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will ask him about the US officially calling the waterway the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. “They’re going to ask me about that when I get there, and I’ll have to make a decision,” Trump said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s