A Moscow court sentenced in absentia this Wednesday to 8.5 years in prison the journalist and producer Marina Ovsiánnikova, who in March 2022 caused a sensation for protesting against the Russian campaign in Ukraine by interrupting live news reports on Russian public television.
After that action, the Russian justice system found her guilty of “organizing a public event without authorization” and fined her 30,000 rubles (288 euros, at the current exchange rate).
The new sentence refers to an individual picket protest that he carried out in July 2022. He displayed a poster whose photos he published on Telegram. In them she is seen on a bridge showing a sign with the Kremlin walls in the background. On the banner she had written: “Putin is a murderer, his fascist soldiers. 352 children have died. How many more have to die for you to stop?”
The judges consider that Ovsiánnikova is guilty of spreading “falsehoods” about the Army “out of political hatred,” the court noted yesterday.
The Russian Prosecutor’s Office, which had requested a longer sentence, 9.5 years, began the process for these acts against Ovsiánnikova, who is now 45 years old, in August 2022. A court then decreed that she remain under house arrest, but in October 2022 escaped confinement in her home with her daughter and fled out of the country. The authorities of the Ministry of the Interior then declared her search and capture.
Shortly afterward, from a location he did not reveal, he proclaimed his innocence. “I consider myself totally innocent, and since our State refuses to comply with its own laws, I refuse to comply with the restrictive measure and free myself from it,” he stated.
On March 14, 2022, Marina Ovsyannikova, who was working as a producer on the Vremia news program on the First Channel of Russian state television, interrupted the live broadcast by launching proclamations and holding a poster against the Russian military campaign in Ukraine. “No to war. End the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here,” she had written on the poster. And it ended in English: “Russians against the war.”
After the fine of 30,000 rubles, he said goodbye to his job and went to Germany, where he worked for Die Welt for several months.
She returned in July to finish arranging custody of her children with her husband.
Russian laws condemning the spread of fake news about the Russian Armed Forces and discrediting the Army were added to the Penal Code in March 2022, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into the neighboring country. .
According to the NGO OVD-Info, at least 724 people have been prosecuted for publicly expressing their pacifist position, 215 of whom are accused of spreading false news about the Army.
