Russian Court Orders Arrest of Dissident Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova
Marina Ovsyannikova, former TV editor at Russia’s Channel One, awaits her hearing on July 28, 2022 after making a live protest against Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Photo: AP Photo/ Alexander Zemlianichenko
A Russian court ordered the official arrest of former Channel One television journalist Marina Ovsyannikova on Thursday, long after she held up a sign during the March 14 broadcast of the news channel to protest Putin’s war, according to Interfax news agency.
This order followed Ovsyannikova’s October 5 social media announcement that she escaped house arrest, saying she “consider[s] herself completely innocent” and refuses to comply, since “[the] state refuses to comply with its own laws.” Ovsyannikova was on house arrest since police raided her Russian home in August. Before this, she fled to Germany and spent some time there as a freelance correspondent for the news agency Die Welt. She had alternative offers for asylum from countries such as France but refused them. Now, according to her lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, Ovsyannikova has once again left the country with her daughter and is safe under the protection of an undisclosed European state.
The grounds for Ovsyannikova’s initial arrest were spreading false information about the Russian military, an offense that has been prohibited by the Russian Parliament under even stricter guidelines since war with Ukraine broke out and which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. After her live broadcast interruption, Ovsyannikova was fined the equivalent of about $270 in Russian currency.
Ovsyannikova’s anti-war actions have extended beyond her original sign-holding on TV. She also recorded a video in Channel One’s studio, urging Russians to join protests while calling Russia the aggressor country and stating that Putin bears sole responsibility for this aggression. Additionally, Ovsyannikova carried out a demonstration in front of the Kremlin, holding up a sign with similar sentiments to her last one and displaying “two life-like children’s dolls covered in red dye” at her feet.
Screenshot from the footage of Ovsyannikova’s March 14, 2022 on-air protest, when she held up a sign that said “No war. Stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda, they're lying to you here” Photo: Insider Screenshot
Since her initial “claim to fame,” Ovsyannikova’s actions have gained worldwide attention and praise. The spokesperson for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, for instance, wrote on Twitter: “Wow, that girl is cool.” More notably, in his daily Telegram video, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally thanked Ovsyannikova for “fight[ing] against disinformation and tell[ing] the truth” in a public and courageous manner. Ovsyannikova, after all, was born in Soviet Ukraine -- in Odessa.
To be sure, protesting the war within Russia is not an uncommon phenomenon. As recently as late September, “at least 796 people had been detained in 33 cities, with almost half of the total reported in… Moscow,” for challenging Putin’s mass military conscription orders, according to human rights group OVD-Info. On April 10, 2022, a member of another (now banned) human rights group, Memorial, was detained after a solo protest similar to Ovsyannikova’s, during which he stood in the Red Square holding a banner that said “Our unwillingness to know the truth and our silence makes us conspirators to this crime.” Acts of sabotage and resistance art have been common methods of showing dissidence, though these are often met with penalties and potential jail time.
The latter seems to be the upcoming fate of Ovsyannikova, considering her repeated relocations to and from Russia and the fact that her protests were widely publicized, serial occurrences for which she took full responsibility.