meduza/ During an evening news broadcast on March 14, Channel One editor Marina Ovsyannikova ran on stage with an anti-war banner that read, “No War. Stop the war! Don’t believe the propaganda! They’re lying to you here! Russians against war.” During the few seconds before the broadcast cut away, Ovsyannikova repeated the words, “No to war! Stop the war!” She was promptly arrested. The authorities say she will face misdemeanor charges for violating Russia’s new ban on “disinformation” about the invasion of Ukraine.
In a prerecorded message shared on social media after the live-television incident, Ovsyannikova made the following remarks: “What is happening in Ukraine is a crime. And Russia is the aggressor here. And responsibility for this aggression rests on the conscience of a single man: Vladimir Putin. My father is Ukrainian.
My mother is Russian. And they’ve never been enemies. And this necklace I’m wearing is a symbol of that fact that Russia must immediately end this fratricidal war. And our fraternal peoples will still be able to make peace. Unfortunately, I’ve spent many of the last few years working for Channel One, doing Kremlin propaganda, and I’m deeply ashamed of this. Ashamed that I allowed lies to come from the TV screen. Ashamed that I allowed the zombification of Russian people. We were silent in 2014 when all this had just started. We didn’t protest when the Kremlin poisoned Navalny. We just silently watched this anti-human regime at work. And now the whole world has turned its back on us. And the next 10 generations won’t wash away the stain of this fratricidal war. We Russians are thinking and intelligent people. It’s in our power alone to stop all this madness. Go protest. Don’t be afraid of anything. They can’t lock us all away.”
