Oksana Baulina could have just shut up and enjoyed the ‘good life’. She was a Moscow fashion magazine editor.
She wore gold Ugg boots and drank champagne at catwalk parties. She rubbed shoulders with the wives and girlfriends of the Kremlin’s favoured oligarchs.
It was a far cry from her upbringing in a grim, industrial city in Siberia. Who could have blamed her if she had closed her eyes to the politics of the kleptocracy? She had it all, it seemed.
And then she gave it all up. This week Oksana, 42, died for her principles: A dissident in exile, on a shabby pavement next to an access road to a car park at the rear of the devastated Retroville shopping centre in Kyiv.
She was killed by a 120mm mortar round, fired by her fellow countrymen as she reported from the other side of the front line of Vladimir Putin’s squalid war. One of her civilian companions also died. An escorting policeman was grievously wounded.
Yesterday the Daily Mail laid lilies on the spot where Oksana – our wholly admirable colleague and the personification of why journalism matters – made the ultimate sacrifice. She is one of at least seven journalists known to be killed in this month-long war.
Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist, pictured, was killed by a 120mm mortar round, fired by her fellow countrymen as she reported from the other side of the front line of Vladimir Putin’s squalid war. One of her civilian companions also died. An escorting policeman was grievously wounded
Through the words of friends and former colleagues, we also pieced together a remarkable life that was ended by the regime she chose to oppose.
She had given up her old existence to work for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who, this week, was jailed for nine years on trumped-up charges in a Russian court.
In 2019 she had launched his YouTube channel – Navalny Live – for which she continued to work until February 2020. The following year she went into exile for her own safety and eventually settled in Kyiv. She had begun her climb to the top at the Moscow edition of the British listings magazine Time Out. When she was killed she was working as an editorial assistant at the independent Russian website The Insider.
Sofia, a heartbroken close friend of the journalist, spoke to me yesterday. ‘Oksana was a bright, shiny, beautiful, amazing person – emotional, brave and completely uncompromising,’ said Sofia.
‘She possessed a heightened sense of justice: That’s why she couldn’t stay away when someone she cared about was in trouble. She was the only journalist I know who took a brave step and switched her career from the entertainment industry to the opposite – fighting the regime.
Yesterday the Daily Mail laid lilies on the spot where Oksana – our wholly admirable colleague and the personification of why journalism matters – made the ultimate sacrifice. She is one of at least seven journalists known to be killed in this month-long war (Daily Mail writer Richard Pendlebury pictured)
‘She gave up a great salary and luxury life – in order to serve her ideals. She had to leave
