[1/4]Former Russian state television employee Marina Ovsyannikova, who staged an anti-war protest on live state television and was later convicted of discrediting the Russian army, attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, July 28, 2022. Portal/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo Purchase license rights
LONDON, Oct 4 (Portal) – Former Russian television journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who attracted global attention when she broke into a news program with a poster reading “Stop the war” and “They are lying to you,” was sentenced in absentia Sentenced Wednesday to eight and a half years in prison.
Ovsyannikova was fined for her original protest, less than three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, in what it called a “special military operation.”
However, she was later prosecuted for “knowingly spreading false information about the Russian armed forces” in connection with a protest in July 2022, when she stood on a river bank opposite the Kremlin and held up a poster calling President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers were called fascists.
“How many more children have to die before you stop?” read the poster.
Ovsyannikova, 45, fled Russia with her daughter to an unspecified European country a year ago after escaping house arrest, according to her lawyer, who said she had no case to plead.
The case against them was brought under laws passed shortly after the Russian invasion that made it a crime to “discredit” the armed forces or spread false information about them.
Ovsyannikova released a statement on Telegram on the eve of the verdict, calling the allegations “absurd and politically motivated.”
“Of course I don’t admit my guilt,” she wrote. “And I don’t retract a single word.”
Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey
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