Ovsyannikova fled Russia
Kremlin critic sentenced to long prison sentence
October 4, 2023, 10:50 a.m
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Her protest on Russian television in March 2022 made Marina Ovsyannikova famous worldwide. The journalist has now gone into hiding in an unknown country. A Moscow court has now sentenced her in absentia to a long prison sentence.
TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova was sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for her protest against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. A Moscow court found the 45-year-old guilty of “knowingly spreading false information about the Russian armed forces.”
The court published the reasoning on the short message portal Telegram. In a spectacular action, Ovsyannikova hijacked a current television news program on February 24, 2022, three weeks after the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. She appeared in the background and held signs that read “End the War” and “They are lying to you” to the cameras.
In October 2022, according to her lawyer, she managed to escape the imposed house arrest with her daughter and flee abroad. She is therefore in an unidentified European country.
In a statement released before the verdict was announced, she described the allegations against her as “absurd and politically motivated.” The justice system “decided to finish me off because I’m not afraid and I call a spade a spade,” she said. “Of course I don’t admit my guilt. And I don’t deny any of my words either. I made a very hard but the only right moral decision in my life and I have already paid a high price for it,” she continued.