Journalist Maria Baronova was for a long time a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but in 2019 she still decided to take a job on the state-controlled television channel RT.
For her, it was a reaction to the Russophobia that has spread in the Western world, but also a way to show the opposition that you need to talk to those in power, she says.
"Ukrainians are not strangers"
When Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, it condemned the war and resigned.
She tells the Foreign Office that Russia's comparisons of the war in Ukraine with the US war in Iraq, for example, are incomprehensible.
- Iraq is on the other side of the world from the United States.
They are completely different people to Americans, but Ukrainians are not strangers to Russians.
They are our friends and our relatives.
It's like George W Bush bombed New York or California.
"Hands in a normal European country"
Working in the media in Russia now is like doing it in North Korea or Iran, says Maria Baronova, and adds that she does not know if the increasingly strong censorship works.
- We did not have censorship before and now we live with censorship and even have laws that can lead to imprisonment if you express yourself in the wrong way.
I need to remind the whole world that this is happening in a normal European country.
Click on the clip to hear Maria Baronova tell more about her situation after resigning and see more about the propaganda war between Russia and Ukraine in the Foreign Office: War and propaganda on SVT Play at 19.30 and on SVT2 at 22.