Photo: Instagram/ovsiannikova6219Marina Ovsyanikova attracted public attention in March last year - a few weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when during a live broadcast of the most watched news program in Russia, she burst into the studio with a banner that read: "Stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, you are being lied to here." "
Russian journalist Marina Ovsyanikova, who organized an anti-war protest after the Kremlin launched an invasion of Ukraine, was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison for "false information" about the Russian military, a Moscow court ruled.
She was also banned from engaging in any activities related to electronic media, including the Internet, for four years.
The case against the journalist has been ongoing since July last year, when she unrolled a poster with the inscription "Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists" with photos of Ukrainian children killed in the war in the Moscow Kremlin - the official residence of Vladimir Putin.
After that, she was placed under house arrest, from which she escaped a few months later, in October, with her eleven-year-old daughter to France. She took her daughter with her because the Moscow court ruled that the girl must stay with her father because her mother is "involved in political activities."
Since then, the journalist has been on the wanted list.
Read more Russian journalist Marina Ovsyanikova: Escaped from house arrest
Russia calls the invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation". Calling war in public is prohibited, and those who do so face severe penalties. Therefore, in March of last year, the Russian president signed a law that foresees long prison sentences for distributing "false information" about Russian military operations.
Performance on state television
The protest in the Kremlin is not the only case that made Ovsyanikova a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin's regime. She is the first editor and journalist of a Russian state television who called the "special military operation" war and aggression.
She expressed her protest by breaking into the live program with the banner "Stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, you are being lied to here." After a few seconds the program is terminated.
Read more Marina Ovjasnikova's protest: They are lying to you
Because of this performance, she was detained, interrogated for hours and finally released with a fine of 30 rubles (about 300 euros).
Ovsyanikova, who was born in the city of Odesa, Ukraine, worked for two decades as a journalist at Channel 1, the Russian state television whose main news program "Time" is considered a Kremlin propaganda outlet.
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"Sometimes I wonder if I could have been silent?" No, I couldn't. To remain silent in a moment of aggression is to become an accomplice in the crime," the journalist wrote in a post on Telegram on Tuesday.
AE/BBC/Al Jazeera/The New York Times
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Marina Ovsyanikova did not appear at the hearing today. It was reported that she ran away with her eleven-year-old daughter. She faces a ten-year prison sentence under Putin's law on the intentional dissemination of false information
Imagine Predrag Sarapa repentantly apologizing one morning in Pinka's studio in a live program for showering the public with progressive lies and propaganda for years. Or Milomir Marić in a moment of righteous enlightenment. Can you imagine that?
"We were silent in 2014 when all this was just at the beginning. We were just watching this inhumane regime. And now everyone has turned away from us, and even ten generations of our descendants will not be enough to wash away the shame of this fratricidal war," said Marina Ovyasnikova in a video message. She is the first editor of a Russian state television to call the war in Ukraine "aggression". She expressed her protest by breaking into the program that was broadcast live
