Russian journalist Marina Ovsiannikova, famous for appearing on television with a poster against the Russian offensive in Ukraine, said she was released after a few hours in detention in Russia.
“I’m home. It’s fine,” Ovsiannikova, 44, said in a note posted on Facebook this morning. “Now I know it’s better to leave home with my passport and a wallet,” she added.
According to Ovsiannikova’s lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, the journalist was detained on suspicion of having “discredited” the army, during an intervention before a Moscow court last week in support of Ilia Iachine, an opponent of the Russian regime, detained for having criticized the offensive. in Ukraine.
Russian journalist arrested for showing anti-war poster on TV
This charge, created after the start of the Russian military intervention, carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The authorities have not yet announced the opening of any criminal investigation against Ovsiannikova.
The arrest comes a few days after the journalist demonstrated alone near the Kremlin, displaying a poster criticizing the military intervention in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On March 14, Ovsiannikova, the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, entered the television studio during Channel 1’s Vremya (Time) newscast, showing, behind the pivota sign with the messageNot to the war. End the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here, they are lying to you. Russians against the war“.
She was then detained by the police and later released. The journalist left the television channel on March 17 of her own free will, as she stated in an interview with France 24.
On March 20, Marina Ovsiannikova again appealed to the Russian people to denounce the offensive of the Moscow army in Ukraine.
“These are very dark and very difficult times and all people who have a civic opinion and who want that opinion to be known must make their voices heard. It is very important, ”he said then in an interview with the American television channel ABC.
The journalist argued thatthe russian people are really against the war“, considering that this is “Putin’s war, not the Russian people’s war”.
On March 25, she was fined 50,000 rubles (about 460 euros) for “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces.
Source: Observadora
