11 March 2023 , 15:15
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A Russian TV editor who interrupted a broadcast to call out Vladimir Putin about his war in Ukraine has shared her terrifying ordeal to escape her homeland after she became a marked woman.
Marina Ovsyannikova, 44, who was born in Ukraine, made headlines a year ago when she stood in front of Channel One cameras with a placard that read: "NO WAR. STOP THE WAR. DO NOT BELIEVE THE PROPAGANDA. THEY'RE LYING TO YOU HERE. RUSSIANS AGAINST WAR."
She was put on the country's red list and placed under house arrest in August in relation to another incident when she held up a poster calling the tyrant a murderer, and his soldiers fascists.
The regime charged her with spreading fake news about Russia's armed forces - a crime recently dreamed up by the Kremlin - for which she could be sentenced to 10 years in a grim Russian penal colony.
In October, Marina fled Russia for Paris, where she is guarded around-the-clock (AFP via Getty Images)But rather than wait for the almost-certain guilty verdict, Marina fled her homeland with her young daughter in a daring escape to Paris.
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They now both live in the French capital after President Emmanuel Macron offered them sanctuary in the form of political asylum and around-the-clock security.
Speaking from Paris, she said: "I know all too well what can happen to enemies of the Kremlin. But there are more and more of us speaking out. Putin can't silence us all."
Last October, she decided to cut her ankle tag with a pair of wire cutters stashed away in her handbag, before setting off on a journey that saw her and daughter Arisha, 11, change cars seven times before reaching the border.
She is on the Kremlin's red list and her safety could not be guaranteed if she remained in Russia (SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)At one point, one of the vehicles was rendered useless after they got stuck in the mud, and the pair had to trudge 12 miles across waterlogged fields and forests, using the stars to navigate their way to the border because they had no phone signal.
Crawling under barbed-wire fences, they had to fall to the ground on several occasions to swerve the searchlights of border guards.
"Making that journey with a child was absolutely terrible," she told the MailOnline.
"At times I didn't think we would make it. But it wasn't safe to stay in Russia. The authorities would have thrown me in prison. They wanted to destroy me."
Marina and her little girl crawled under barbed-wire fences to escape (AFP via Getty Images)Marina and Arisha have been provided 24-hour security due to historic cases of Putin targetting Russian nationals on foreign soil, including the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018, and the killing of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
But they've still had to keep moving while in Paris, living in apartment after apartment.
Her decision has also had massive ramifications in relation to her personal life, losing friends, her home, her job and family members, like her son Kirill, 17, who refuses to speak to her.
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After her protests, her ex-husband and father of her children applied for custody, claiming she was unfit to care for them.
While conceding that her decisions have changed her life, she says her loss is nowhere near as bad as the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
She said she hoped her son will one day see why she made those choices.
"I hope that one day, when Putin has gone, I will be able to hug my mother again," she added.