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Zhanna Agalakova speaks to media during a press conference at the Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) headquarters in Paris today.

Source: Aurore Marechal

A Russian journalist – who for years was senior foreign correspondent for state-run television – today lashed out at the propaganda broadcast by pro-Kremlin media after dramatically quitting over the invasion of Ukraine.

Zhanna Agalakova, a familiar face in Russian households from two decades work as a correspondent from postings including New York and Paris, had earlier this month announced she was leaving Pervy Kanal (Channel One) due to the invasion.

Speaking in public for the first time since she quit, Agalakova told reporters at a news conference in Paris organised by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that she could no longer be involved in the “lies” and “manipulation” of Russian state TV.

“I want the people of Russia to hear me and learn what propaganda is and stop being zombified,” she said.

With tears in her eyes, Agalakova said she had hesitated a lot before speaking out in public but then decided “there was no other choice”.

Agalakoa admitted that she had “made many compromises in my career” but she described the invasion of Ukraine as a “red line”.

Agalakova announced she was leaving her channel in an Instagram video posted last week, symbolically cutting a Pervy Kanal band around her wrist and saying she had already written her resignation letter on 3 March.

She described a media system that “just gives the point of view of the Kremlin”.

Agalakova pointed to how state television covers President Vladimir Putin with exhaustive coverage of his macho holiday activities but with no scrutiny of his private life which is an absolute taboo.

“Our news does not show the country, we do not see Russia,” she said.

“We only see the first man of the country, what he ate, who he shook hands with, we even saw him shirtless. But we don’t know if he’s married, if he has children,” she said.

She lambasted the state media for its repeated description of Russia’s opponents in Ukraine as “Nazis”, a term that touches a particular nerve in a country still scarred by the sacrifices of World War II.

“When, in Russia, we hear the word ‘Nazi’, we only have one reaction – destroy. It’s a manipulation, a huge lie.”

Justifying her long career as correspondent in New York and Paris, she said: “I thought that by reporting on life in Europe – and in particular in Paris – I could avoid being propagandistic.”

“I didn’t lie, every fact was real. But take real facts, mix them up and you’ll end up with a big lie,” she said.