KYIV. March 13 (Interfax) - Ukrainian journalist Ankhar Kochneva, who was recently taken hostage by Syrian insurgents and managed to flee several days ago, plans to visit Russia, where her child lives, and then return to Damascus.
Kochneva gave details of her abduction, captivity and flight in an interview published in the March 12 issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine.
Kochneva said armed men had stopped a taxi carrying her on a highway near Homs as if to check the passengers' documents. "They pointed guns at us and forced the driver and another passenger into the trunk, but not me, thank God. And they drove us somewhere where there were some thugs," she said.
Asked to comment on a video in which she admitted to working for Russian special services, Kochneva said, "I was forced to say that I had come to Syria by order of Russian intelligence services and that I was the Defense Ministry's chief interpreter there. They threatened me."
Kochneva said she was being held in Homs, not far from the Lebanese border, and that her conditions were relatively acceptable over the first 40 days, but then the guards "got tired."
"I was guarded by a man with a four-grade education, including two years actually in a kindergarten. When he felt bad, he shouted at me, hurled metal basins at me and insulted me all the time," she said.
The journalist said that, several days after she was abducted, "the opposition chief of staff" took her away on the pretext that he was going to save her. "He told me he was guarding me and that there were checkpoints everywhere. But he actually lied, like he said on February 19 that he was going to let me go, but I'd heard he'd told someone else: Now we may get several millions for her and buy weapons," she said.
She added that she was living in a room with a broken window, and therefore she is now suffering problems with her kidneys and respiratory system.
Asked about her escape, Kochneva said she had been preparing for it for several days. "I thought for several days that someone would help me. But the man who was supposed to help me probably failed to find my house. We failed to meet, and I did everything myself. That is, I simply walked out of the house and passed by their checkpoint three meters away from my door," she said.
Kochneva said she covered 15 kilometers roughly in an hour and forty minutes and reached a village, whose residents helped her with her flight.
Talking about her further plans, Kochneva said she intended to go to Moscow and then return to Syria. "Then I will probably go to Moscow. I need to visit doctors, and my child is there. And then back to Damascus," she said.
It was reported earlier that Kochneva had been abducted by rebels of the Free Syrian Army in October 2012. The abductors demanded a $50-million ransom, but they told the woman's relatives in early 2013 that they had reduced it to $300,000.
Kochneva's relative announced on March 11 that she had fled earlier on Monday and was safe in Damascus.