Prague-based journalist Kurbangaleeva faces Russian extradition request
Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has requested the extradition of former Russian state television anchor Farida Kurbangaleeva from the Czech Republic. The journalist has been in exile since 2014, when she left Russia and her job at the state-controlled Rossiya 1 TV channel in protest of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.
The extradition request, a copy of which Kurbangaleeva posted on Facebook on Monday, does not specify the charges against her. However, she believes it is linked to criminal cases opened against her last summer—one for "justifying terrorism" and another for spreading "false information" about the Russian military. In June last year, she was placed on Russia’s wanted list and labelled a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice, and was later charged in absentia.
A former presenter of the Vesti news program on the state-run channel Rossiya 1, Kurbangaleeva left the network in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In an interview with Radio Prague, she explained that she initially lacked the courage to leave, and her pregnancy ultimately provided a timely opportunity to exit quietly:
"At one point, I was simply a coward. Some media outlets, including major ones like TASS and RBK, write that I left television immediately after the annexation of Crimea, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In fact, I believe I was the first person to announce the annexation on Russian federal television. I was on the afternoon shift when the news of Putin's decision came in on March 18, and I was the one who read the announcement on the 2 p.m. broadcast. I was not a hero. It took time for me to change, to work on myself."
After leaving Russia, Kurbangaleeva moved to Prague, where she worked for the Russian-language TV channel Current Time, a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), from 2018 to 2021. She now collaborates with the exiled news outlet Govorit NeMoskva and runs her own YouTube channel.
Asked why she, in particular, was being targeted when not all opposition journalists face such intense persecution, she had this to say:
"I think it has to do with my work as a journalist after the full invasion of Ukraine. At one point, I had decided to leave journalism altogether. But when the war began, I felt I had to make my opposition very clear. As a result, I ended up on every enemy list imaginable, and recently, they even issued an international warrant for my arrest."
Despite believing in a better future for Russia, Kurbangaleeva acknowledges that change will not come quickly:
"I don’t believe that Putin will simply die and that people who uphold liberal-democratic values will immediately come to power. That is not going to happen. But I do believe that one day, good will triumph over evil, and this dark period in Russia’s history will end, along with the harm Russia has inflicted on the world. However, if you consider the 'foreseeable future' to be the next 10 years, I don’t think we will make it. We won’t see that change within a decade."
Sharing the extradition request on Facebook, Kurbangaleeva dismissed the charges against her as fabricated and expressed confidence that Czech authorities would not comply.
