Tue 15 March 2022:
Marina Ovsyannikova, a producer of the Kremlin-controlled Channel One television network who interrupted a live broadcast Monday night with an anti-war banner, is facing up to 10 years in jail, a Russian lawyer has said.
An anti-war protester has interrupted the main news program on Russia’s state TV Channel One, holding up a sign behind the studio presenter with slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine.
Russian anti-war protester Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One, holding up a sign behind a studio presenter and shouting slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine.#Ukraine #Russian pic.twitter.com/8LUFtrzrxB
— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) March 15, 2022
The sign, in English and Russian, read: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
Another phrase, which looked like “Russians against war”, was partly obscured.
The extraordinary protest took place on day 19 of the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, in what it called a “special military operation”.
“Stop the war. No to war,” the woman protester could be heard shouting, as the news anchor continued to read from her teleprompter.
The protester could be seen and heard for several seconds before the channel switched to a different report to remove her from the screen.
Pavel Chikov, head of Agora, said she had been arrested and taken to a Moscow police station.
Tass said Ms Ovsyannikova might face charges under a law against discrediting the armed forces, citing a law enforcement source.
Ivan Zhdanov, a Moscow-based attorney who works for Alexey Navalny’s Fund to Fight Corruption, tweeted Tuesday that Ovsyannikova may face charges of creating “a false report about an act of terrorism”.
По Марине Овсянниковой ведется доследственная проверка по статье УК 207.3.
Ей грозит от 5 до 10 лет.
Если они и правда это сделают, то героический поступок Марины будет вообще в истории.— Ivan Zhdanov (@ioannZH) March 15, 2022
‘I don’t regret it’
Marina has said she doesn’t regret interrupting the live broadcast Monday night with an anti-war banner even though she may face up to ten years in jail.
“I don’t know what will happen to me any time soon. My lawyer told me I might be facing time in jail from 5 to 10 years according to the criminal code,” she wrote on Twitter.
“I don’t regret it. I need your endorsement though.”
I don’t know what will happen to me any time soon. My lawyer told me I might be facing time in jail from 5 to 10 years according to the criminal code.
I don’t regret it. I need your endorsement though.#StopTheWar .— Marina Ovsyannikova | Марина Овсянникова (@MarinaOvsy) March 15, 2022
‘Hooliganism’
The Kremlin has said that the actions of a woman who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One to denounce the war in Ukraine amounted to “hooliganism”.
The protester, in an act of dissent on Monday, held up a sign behind the studio presenter and shouted slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine.
“As far as this woman is concerned, this is hooliganism,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, praising Channel One for what he called its quality, objective and timely programming.
State TV is the main source of news for many millions of Russians, and closely follows the Kremlin line that Russia was forced to act in Ukraine to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” the country, and to defend Russian-speakers there against “genocide”.
Ukraine and most of the world have condemned that as a false pretext for an invasion of a democratic country.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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