Russia: The limits of freedom
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In August, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, Sarah Rainsford, was expelled from Russia – a country she’s reported on from the start of Vladimir Putin’s presidency over two decades ago. Now she has been designated a ‘national security threat’ and barred indefinitely. The move against the BBC comes at a time of unprecedented pressure on critical voices in Russia – from opposition activists to independent Russian journalists, who are now blacklisted as ‘agents’ of foreign states. For Assignment, Sarah Rainsford explores what happened to her and what this says about the country she’s been forced to leave.
Producer/presenter: Sarah Rainsford Producer: Will Vernon
(Photo: Sarah Rainsford. Credit: Jonathan Ford)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Sarah Rainsford and on August 10th I landed back home in Moscow. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Sarah Rainsford and on August the 10th I landed back home in Moscow. I had no idea it was for the last time until a |
| 0:19.6 | border guard took me |
| 0:23.4 | I was a threat to national security. |
| 0:28.6 | You are barred from entering the Russian Federation in definitely |
| 0:31.8 | in order to protect the security of the Russian Federation indefinitely in order to protect the security of the Russian |
| 0:34.3 | Federation. |
| 0:35.3 | I'm going to worry, I'm a journalist. |
| 0:38.6 | I protested, horrified, telling the officer I was a journalist the BBC's Moscow correspondent not dangerous. |
| 0:47.0 | He said he knew all about me and I was being deported on the orders of the FSB, Russia's powerful security agency. |
| 0:58.0 | Russia has always been more than a story for me. I've called it home for almost a third of my life, so I was devastated. |
| 1:10.0 | At that moment, in the airport, sitting on a broken bench I began to record my thoughts. |
| 1:17.0 | Apparently this is a decision that has no end date. |
| 1:21.0 | It's a permanent ban from entering Russia, a country where I study the |
| 1:25.9 | language. I've been coming here for three decades, but apparently that's it. My whole story with Russia is over. There have been dozens of people detained here on Treskaire Street. |
| 1:48.1 | The police are simply moving into the crowd and it seems that they're pulling |
| 1:51.0 | people out pretty much at random. |
| 1:53.0 | We've seen... |
| 1:54.0 | I've reported throughout Vladimir Putin's presidency |
| 1:57.0 | on his gradual crushing of rights and freedoms. |
| 2:01.0 | But over the past year, the repression has become much more intense. |
| 2:04.8 | We're great, |
... |
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