Dear Friends,

“The resources deployed by RSF were extraordinary. They saved my life, they helped me to flee Russia, a country where the government is run by war criminals.” That’s what Russian journalist Marina Ovsiannikova said at the press conference held at our headquarters this morning to provide an exclusive account of her extraordinary escape from Moscow, which Reporters Without Borders (RSF) helped coordinate.

Five days after Marina Ovsiannikova became a symbol of resistance against Russian propaganda in March 2022 by brandishing an anti-war sign on camera in a Russian TV news studio, I called her to offer our support. In September, when she was under house arrest in Moscow, fitted with an electronic bracelet and facing a possible ten-year jail sentence, she told us she wanted to flee Russia. She left Moscow a few days later and, for four months, a small unit of RSF employees worked in the utmost secrecy on organising her escape, called “Operation Evelyne.”

What she did shows that it is possible to resist propaganda apparatuses, that one can disrupt them from within, that one can say no, and that it is possible to get out of them, to defect, to oppose the falsification of history and the manipulation of the news.

It is your support that makes this possible.

Thank you for your help.