Simonyan was born in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar , into an Armenian family . Both of her parents are descendants of Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire . Her father 's family , originally from Trabzon , settled in Crimea during the Armenian Genocide of 1915 . During World War II , they were deported by Beria 's NKVD to the Urals along with thousands of other Hamshen Armenians . While her father was born in Yekaterinburg ( Sverdlovsk ) , her mother was born in Sochi to an Armenian family that had fled the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks in the late 19th century . Her family owns a restaurant in Moldovka town in Adlersky City District , Sochi . She is from a working-class family and decided at an early age she wanted to become a journalist . She first worked for the local newspaper , and then for a local television station while studying journalism at Kuban State University
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Margarita Simonyan