Ankhar Kochneva: 153 days of captivity

Author: VK

Many things are said about Ankhar Kochneva, but one can reliably say is that she is a real adventurer.

Ankhar was born in Odessa in 1972, in the family of a Ukrainian doctor and teacher of music. When she was at school, she was fascinated by Arabic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union she moved to Moscow. There she worked in small business, and continued to study Arabic at the Institute of Patrice Lumumba. Then she began to translate texts and hold tours, she traveled around the Arab world, studying their traditions, "acquiring" bonds, making friends with representatives of the Arab countries in Russia, and worked as a translator for official events at embassies. After a while, Ankhar created one of the first travel companies in Russia, which organized for the Russians stay in Jordan, Syria and Israel –"Jordanian club." She promoted the Arab countries as a tourist destination and has written several guidebooks. We can assume that during the period of "Jordanian club" Ankhar found in Syria senior friends. In any case, it is rumored that she had already been well received in the circles close to President Bashar Assad, "Segodnya.ua." reports

After a couple of years, the "Jordanian club" because of the competition with the large tour companies stopped bringing former income and Ankhar went to live in Syria leaving daughter with ex-husband. There she lectured in support of Bashar al-Assad, kept blogs, wrote notes in the online edition, helped Russian and Ukrainian journalists who came to Damascus. Through links with the military and government officials, she could organize meetings for journalists, find transportation and interpreters, develop route trips to Syria. So Ankhar lived in such a way until October of last year when it was reported on her abduction.

Ukrainian media has put forward three theories as to the capture of the journalist.

First. Kochneva irritated Syrian opposition, who has decided to neutralize it, to prevent her from "muddying" information space.

Second. Ankhar, called the genius of extreme self-PR, personally staged her kidnapping to discredit the Syrian opposition in the eyes of the world.

Three. Kochneva decided to isolate a man who knew too much about military cooperation between Moscow and Damascus, in particular, on the possible supply of Russian arms to Syria. Analysts linking kidnapping with forced landing in Turkey of the Syrian plane from Moscow with Russian citizens come to this conclusion

Anyway, having escaped from her, Kochneva gathered journalists in Moscow and explained to them her version of what happened.

"At the time when I moved to Syria On Oct. 22, 2011, there was still calm. We actually talked about this: it is quite calm in the country, and the picture that comes to the West does not exist, we walk through the streets, we do not see that”, Ankhar described the start of her work in Syria. Now the situation in the country has changed, but Kochneva inclined to blame the Ministry of Information of Syria of her lack of knowledge: "I hope I'll get to the Syrian president and say this. Because it is impossible to know from news releases that, say, the district has become dangerous, then again someone was stolen. We live and we think that the bandits are blocked and, as it turned out, they can get out on the road and steal people. Moreover, they steal them permanently... then it turns out that people are bought with the money, and where does the money go? They are necessary for buying arms. That is, it turns out, the Ministry of Information rearms bandits, one of the sources of funding… Today, it was written on Facebook, that a person was stolen, and the amount of 200 thousand dollars is required. Now the latest informationis that only in Damascus 7000 people are kidnapped just recently. And what is going on across the country? It's business. Business to trade people's lives ... The problem is that this information is not published. "Al Jazeera" lies openly, western channels lie, and these show a half-truth. We do not get any nformation that there was bad, the army suffered a defeat, there were bandits somewhere”.

Therefore Ankhar absolutely calmly got into a taxi and went to help colleagues from NTV, who were going to shoot in Aleppo a plot on the alleged shelling from Turkey. "After driving 10-15 miles we saw a stir on the road. But because the bandits were uniformed like the regular Syrian army, we did not even think about how to take back. So when they say, "The army kills civilians," it is not the army, these are bandits. We were stopped. The driver was trying to escape. They caught him and his companion and packed them into the trunk. A nineteen-year-old bandit sat down next to me, and another one was behind me. And we were taken somewhere deep into the villages. "



Kochneva spent 153 days in captivity, and for a moment she felt that she should run: "You have to make the possibility to face someone as small as possible. It was clear that I had to go, because later security measures could be strengthened. In fact, for some days it was prepared, studied, when people woke up, where I could go, because I had no idea of it. Understandably, the army fired on the north, all right, I should go to the north, probably, they were there ... I took a large vessek for milk, that is, from a distance it could seem that someone went to buy milk. And no one would not have thought to get closer to look who it was. There were a lot of strangers in the area, because after the military operations in the southern suburbs of Homs, a lot of people to moved there. This is some unknown person, perhaps, it is someone who lives here, she goes for the milk. And I went on the road. The plan was as follows: asking someone to hide me in his home and give me the phone. I was focused on living there for several months, or until the army would come, or something else. It turned out even better ... ".



Speaking about the release with the intervention of the authorities, Ankhar excluded this possibility: "Speaking of a special operation is impossible, because a lot of people would be killed. At some talks 50 million dollars were asked, and later they asked only two millions. I personally would be very against paying any kind of money. Because it is clear that the money would go to buy weapons to kill people. Saving my life for the price of other people's deaths ... I'd rather die, I guess. Especially, if all the journalists will write about this. That is a continuation of my work, the story of what's really going on. "