“Worse than death”: Journalist Ekaterina Barabash, who fled again in Parisian house arrest in Russia, | World news

The experienced journalist and film critic Ekaterina Barabash was discovered this week in Paris after she had secretly fled from the house arrest in Moscow, where she was exposed to a potential 10-year prison sentence for social media posts in which Russia invasion was convicted of Ukraine.The 63 -year -old Barabash fled the country in April and helped reporters without borders (RSF). The organization revealed that it removed their electronic monitoring day and traveled more than 2,800 kilometers (around 1,700 miles) over 'secret' routes to reach France.“Her escape was one of the most dangerous operations in which RSF had been involved in March 2022 since Russia's draconian laws,” said the director of the group, Thibaut Bruuttin, during a press conference with Barabash in the Paris RSF headquarters. “At some point we thought she could be dead.”Barabash, who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was arrested in February 2022 after returning from the Berlinale Film Festival. The Russian authorities accused them of “misrepresented false information” about the military and, based on Facebook posts between 2022 and 2023, they described them as a “foreign agent” that criticized the war effort in Russia. In a contribution, the bombing of the Ukrainian cities and the suffering condemned that civilians were inflicted.“There is no culture in Russia … there is no policy … it's just war,” she said in Paris. Barabash said that the concept of a “Russian journalist” no longer made any sense. “Journalism cannot exist under totalitarianism.”“So they bombed the country (explosive), pulled entire cities to the ground, killed a hundred children, shot without a reason civilians, blocked Mariupol, robbed millions of people with normal life and forced them to go to abroad for the friendship of friendship with Ukraine?” One of Barabash's contributions was.Her escape route led her through several borders and she hid two weeks before she arrived in France on April 26, on his birthday. The most painful part, she said, left her 96-year-old mother behind. “I just understood that I would never see her,” said Barabash, adding that both decided not to see her while she was free to be better than a Russian prison.Barabash's son and grandson stay in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. She has not been able to see her since the beginning of the war and said: “I have a Russian passport.”According to the RSF, over 90 media organizations have moved to the EU and neighboring countries since the beginning of the war. Russia is the 171st of 180 in the RSFS 2025 World Press Freedom Index.“The prison in Russia is worse than death,” said Barabash of Associated Press. “If you want to stay a journalist, you have to go.”At least 38 journalists remain detained in Russia, and over 1,200 people were charged with expression of anti -war views. Of these, 389 are currently in custody, according to the Human Rights Group Ovd-Info.