Hello and welcome to another episode of the Battleground podcast with me, Saul David.

Today, I'm going solo again and we're veering away from the usual news format for

Ukraine because we've got a very special interview with a brave, young, independent

Russian journalist called Maria. Now, Maria has been covering the recent trials of Ukrainian

POWs in the so-called Donets People's Republic in occupied eastern Ukraine. And it goes without saying that it's very

brave of Maria to come on the podcast for obvious reasons. Maria, thanks so much for doing this

and welcome to the podcast. Nice to be your guest. Okay, well let's start at the beginning,

shall we? Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how and why you became a journalist?

Well, I started to work as a journalist really early at 18 years old, probably, after my first

year at the university. And probably I've got classic story. I entered to a university

in journalism faculty and was really interested in social problems in my country. And I liked to

write about different things and thought that journalism is the best fear for it for my development.

And also, I was growing at the time when Alexei Navalny, our opposition leader, was really

popular. And in the 2017, 2018, he had, his team and he had big protest against corruption things in Russia.

And so I was young and interested in that.

Well, because of that, I decided to be a journalist and wrote about political issues and social issues, corruptions and so on.

I think it goes without saying to our listeners that covering those sort of subjects,

particularly in the context of the current war in Ukraine, puts you in a rather invidious,

indeed dangerous position, Maria.

So, you know, it's pretty impressive what you're doing.

Keep up the good work. I mentioned in the

introduction that you've been covering the recent trials of Ukrainian prisoners of war, more than

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