MEDIA WINNERS: Maria Baronova
A top editor at Kremlin-backed media conglomerate RT has quit her job in protest of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Maria Baronova, the editor in chief of RT’s Russian-language edition, said she resigned from the outlet in an interview with news outlet Znak. Baronova told Znak she “has nothing left to talk about” with those who support the invasion of Ukraine, and would not be speaking further about her resignation on social media platforms. Baronova previously spoke out against the invasion in a post on her Telegram. In a post published Feb. 26, she described Putin’s government as “totalitarian” and said it has turned the lives of Russians into “an endless hell.” The post was a response to Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of English-language RT and a close Putin adviser, who has mocked Russians objecting to the war. “If you are ashamed of being Russian now, don’t worry, you are not Russian,” Simonyan said as thousands took to the streets in Russia to protest the invasion last week. Baronova took an unlikely path to the top of RT’s masthead. In 2019, when she first joined the Kremlin-funded news outlet, she was known as an opposition activist. Time magazine once described her as “the face of Russia’s opposition.” In an interview with Gessen, Baronova appeared to express hope that she could change Russia for the better through her job at RT. Some, like opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were skeptical Baronova's move to the state-funded network was a baffling choice, and her explanation for it was thin. But publicly criticizing the invasion, and walking out of RT, was the right thing to do. And it's a public blow to RT, which was just shut down on DirecTV. |