RUSSIA/UKRAINE: An ex-Russian anchor and journalist, Marina Ovsyannikova, who protested against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine live on-air, has been charged with spreading fake news and misinformation about the country’s army. If the matter is probed and investigated further on the legal stage, then she faces a jail term of up to 10 years.
Ovsyannikova, a Ukraine-born journalist, expressed her discontent and disillusionment on live television after she staged a walk-out in front of a studio camera with an anti-war placard during a live broadcast on Russia’s flagship Channel One.
Reuters reported that her lawyer shared the news of her possible indictment in a post on telegram. The charges against her are related to a similar anti-war demonstration held and participated in by Ovsyannikova, where she held up an anti-war slogan on the Moskva river embankment opposite Kremlin and shared the images on her telegram channel.
Consequently, Ovsyannikova was accosted by police while walking her dogs just outside her residence. She was not incarcerated but held up at the station for a few hours.
Referring to the fiasco, she wrote, “Went for a walk with the dogs, just stepped outside the gate, people in uniform approached me. Now I’m sitting in Krasnoselsky’s ministry of internal affairs.”
However, ever since then, she has been detained and fined several times for her persistent refusal to bow down before Putin’s murderous involvement in Ukraine.
Reuters also reports that earlier on Wednesday, the Russian journalist had confronted police who shoved their way into her home in the early hours of the dawn to search for taking her away to charge her.
