Kidnapped Canadian journalist in Ukraine is freed after pretending to be French Canadian

Kidnapped Canadian journalist in Ukraine is freed after pretending to be French Canadian

[link to www.thestar.com]

One last card to play. “Parlez-vous Francais?” I asked in the calmest voice I could muster. “Je suis un journalist Canadien. Franco-Canadien .” Franco Franco Franco. I couldn’t say it enough. Anything but English.


It was a ruse that probably shouldn’t have worked. But it slowed things down. The woman pulled down the arm of the man with the cellphone, buying us time.


For the next 30 minutes we withstood a withering browbeat. It was The World According to Putin — a fierce, beseeching laundry list of grievances, frustrations and fear, delivered in staccato Russian.


But the more they vented, the less angry they became. And about halfway through, I began to think — hope — vive le Quebec libre . My dismal command of Canada’s other official language was enough to persuade these desperate and panicked monolingual Russians in Ukraine that we weren’t really the enemy. French, ironically, was our Get Out Of Jail card in a part of Ukraine whose language lacks official status with the new government in Kyiv.


This complex mess involves much more than language. But as we worked to extract ourselves — there were least 20 handshakes in the final 15 minutes of the encounter, and one of the men actually said “sorry” at the very end — the risk of speaking English in these parts was never more apparent.


The airwaves have been stripped of Ukrainian television and there are Moscow’s state-controlled feeds in their place. And for the past week, leaflets have been circulating throughout the insurgent-controlled towns warning of American provocateurs. “Beware the CIA in sheep’s clothing,” one reads.