Police came with a search for former Channel One employee Marina Ovsyannikova. She reported this to OVD-Info on Wednesday, August 10th. To provide legal assistance, an OVD-Info lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, came to her.
According to Zakhvatov, the policemen refused to wait for his arrival and “ran into the house” of Ovsyannikova. The search is taking place in connection with a criminal case initiated under the article on “public dissemination of known false information about the Russian Armed Forces” (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Zakhvatov told Meduza that he had not yet seen the decision to open a case, but suggested it was related to Ovsyannikova’s anti-war picket at one of Moscow’s landfills.
A picket in front of the Kremlin and an on-air action from Channel One
On July 15, Ovsyannikova walked to the anti-war picket in front of the Kremlin, holding a banner that read, among other things, “Putin is a murderer.” During the action at the Sofiyskaya embankment, she was not detained. The journalist was arrested on July 17 and soon released after an administrative protocol was drawn up.
In mid-March, Ovsyannikova, while still working as an evening news editor on Channel One, entered the live frame with a poster “No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They lie to you here. Russians against the war. war.” Before that, she recorded a video message: “What is happening now in Ukraine is a crime. Russia is an aggressor country, and only one person is responsible for this aggression. That person is Vladimir Putin.” As a result, Ovsyannikova was sentenced to a fine of 30,000 rubles under an administrative article for violating the established procedure for holding a rally – because of the video recorded before the action.
Three months of work at the German TV channel Welt
In early April, Berlin media Axel Springer announced that Ovsyannikova had been hired by German news channel Welt. Three months later, the contract ended and she returned to Russia. Ovsyannikova, who won the German Media Prize for Freedom (“Freiheitspreis der Medien”), ultimately decided not to present the award. In May, she received the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Protest.
Source: DW
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