BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford has been reporting regularly from Moscow for some twenty years. Her work there included numerous interviews with Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday, Putin’s bureaucrats, all of whom report directly to him, expelled her and told her she can never return to Russia.
She was deemed to be a danger to Russia’s national security. That was after she had travelled to Minsk to challenge Belarus’ Dictator, Alexandr Lukashenko, during Lukashenko’s annual charade in which he speaks to a room packed with journalists, where he pretends to answer their questions, however pointed (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58395121).
All this was an important part of yesterday’s evening news for America, by the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan.
After confronting Dictator Lukashenko in Minsk, Rainsford returned to her Moscow apartment, where Putin’s thugs told her to pack up and leave instanter. Which she did.
She was accompanied by our Moscow-based associate solitary reporter, Foma Kheroshonsky.
Before leaving Moscow, she posted a last report, much of which had been prepared for her by Kheroshonsky.
As they crossed into the UK via the tunnel under the Channel, the BBC’s Interim CEO, Tom Fussell, texted them to tell them that they will both be posted to Belarus, with the sole purpose of taunting Lukashenko at every possible opportunity.