According to Marina Ovsyannikova, shortly after Russian troops entered Ukraine three weeks ago, she decided that her voice should be heard.
Ms. Ovsyannikova, a TV producer on the Kremlin’s leading channel Channel One, initially thought she would join the anti-war demonstrations on the streets of Moscow. Her son, fearing that she would be arrested, hid her car keys.
Then she settled on a more daring plan. When the Monday evening newscast began, Ms. Ovsyannikova got up from her desk. Flashing her ID, she passed through two security checkpoints and raced past the last guard at the studio door.
Bursting into view behind the host of the show, she shouted, “Stop the war, no war.” Before the camera cut off, she showed the poster to millions of viewers. It said: “There is no war. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here you are being lied to. Russians against the war.
She then left the studio, past the stunned security guard, and into the hallway, where she dropped the poster to the floor and was met by executives rushing towards her. They immediately handed her over to the police.
In about 10 seconds, Ms. Ovsyannikova went from a self-proclaimed cog in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s messaging machine to one of the most visible and courageous dissidents opposed to his war.
A woman, identified as a Russian state television employee, interrupted the live broadcast while waving a banner against the war in Ukraine; the shelling of Kyiv intensified, the tram and residential areas were damaged; some EU leaders are arriving in Kyiv as diplomatic efforts continue. Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine
“The future of my country is being decided right now,” she said in an interview. And she says she wanted to stand up and be counted.
Ms Ovsyannikova was released from custody on Tuesday and fined about $280 by a Moscow court for a video she posted explaining her actions. Her lawyers warn that she could still face charges under a new Russian law that bans criticism of the military and makes it illegal to describe the Russian offensive in Ukraine as a war or an invasion. Punishment: up to 15 years in prison.
Ms Ovsyannikova said she has no plans to leave the country and is currently in a safe place provided by her lawyers. Referring to a phrase popularized by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she added: “Everyone who is interested in the bright future of this country should be here – even if for 15 years behind bars.”
Following Ms. Ovsyannikova’s live protest on Monday, at least four leading journalists from state-owned TV channels resigned.
The speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament this week called for the producer of Channel One to be treated “with all severity.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Putin issued a broad warning against dissent. “Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a mosquito that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Putin said in the featured speech. on state television. “I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country.”
The Kremlin’s flagship network Channel One broadcasts from the Ostankino television center in Moscow.
Photo: -/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Ms. Ovsyannikova was born in the Soviet Union in the now Ukrainian city of Odessa to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother. She says she considers herself Russian, not Ukrainian. Her father, who served in the Soviet Navy, was Russian-speaking and died about a year after she was born. Her mother soon moved her to Russia, where she still lives.
Ms. Ovsyannikova’s interest in journalism began when she was in high school in the mid-90s and her mother worked at a local radio station. In those days, she said, the Russian press was relatively free.
“Journalism was not permanent state propaganda,” Ovsyannikova recalls. “Everyone aspired to smart and good work.”
Ms. Ovsyannikova worked for state television in her hometown after graduation and then moved to the capital, Moscow, in 2002 in search of higher opportunities. After receiving her master’s degree, she began writing news reports for the famous TV presenter Zhanna Agalakova. Ms. Agalakova is one of the hosts who quit this week.
Marina Ovsyannikova stated that she had no plans to leave Russia.
Photo: The Wall Street Journal
It was in 2008, when Russia launched a military campaign against neighboring Georgia, that Ms Ovsyannikova says she first began to feel “cognitive dissonance”—loving her country but disagreeing with its direction.
However, she continued to work for the state television and radio company. Her career took a backseat to her personal life and her children, who are now 11 and 17, and she had to provide for them.
Then, in August 2020, when Mr. Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent, she thought about protesting. Mr. Navalny blamed government agents for this. The Kremlin denies any involvement.
“But I understood that I was working for a state channel and I couldn’t afford it,” Ms. Ovsyannikova said. “With all these turbulent financial crises, some kind of constant source of income is needed. You have to feed your family.”
In less than two years, the war began in Ukraine. “We have reached this point of evil and we can’t take it anymore,” she said. “This is a fratricidal war. Ukrainians are the same Slavs and every second Russian has relatives in Ukraine,” she said. “They have chosen their own path, their direction towards Europe, towards European values. This is their choice. They are free people.”
Marina Ovsyannikova said she was thinking about a protest after the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was taken out of a police station outside Moscow in 2021.
Photo: Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Ms. Ovsyannikova’s friend, Nina Aleksa, quit the state TV station in 2016 and began working for a previously banned opposition organization. The two discussed politics while watching their children on the playground.
“She always had those thoughts,” Ms. Alexa said. “But I never pushed or criticized her.”
Alexa, 37, moved to Tbilisi, Georgia, a growing center of Russian emigration, last June and hasn’t been heard from since she left.
Last Saturday, she said, she received a message from Ms. Ovsyannikova.
“She asked me about emigration, how it was, how it was in Tbilisi,” recalls Mrs. Alexa. “She said, ‘This seems to be my future.’ ”
Then, on Monday at 6:00 pm, Ms. Alexa received another message from her friend: “Please record the 9 o’clock news.” “Be patient a little,” Ms. Ovsyannikova joked to her friend. “You’ll like it.”
“I thought she was warning me to watch out for insider information, like Putin would announce his resignation or something,” Ms Alexa said.
When she saw Mrs. Ovsyannikova on her screen, she did not believe it. She called her about an hour later, but Ms. Ovsyannikova said she was at the police station and would write to her. She sent a pre-recorded video to Ms. Alexa and asked her to share it with overseas media.
Ms. Alexa, who now works for the Free Russia Foundation in Washington, says donors have raised enough funds to get Ms. Ovsyannikova and her entire family out of the country. She strongly disagrees with her friend’s decision to stay.
Marina Ovsyannikova leaves the courthouse in Moscow on Tuesday.
Photo: REUTERS TV/REUTERS
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that France would grant asylum to Ms Ovsyannikova and that he would raise the issue with Mr Putin.
Ms Ovsyannikova said that she thought the majority of Russians were against the war. The day Russia launched its invasion, everyone she knew, including her colleagues, was horrified and “stupefied,” she said.
“The life of Russians is falling apart like a house of cards,” she said, pointing to the exit of foreign companies and the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. “People just haven’t fully grasped it yet.”
Ms. Ovsyannikova explained why she made her poster bilingual. “What was written in English was meant for the Western public so that people abroad would understand that the majority of Russians are against this senseless war,” she said. “Russian was for our zombified people who believe in this propaganda machine.”
The protest was welcomed by many opposition activists and independent journalists, but some also criticized Ms. Ovsyannikova for helping promote the government line on Channel One for years.
Ms. Ovsyannikova says she decided she could no longer be a part of the machine, but brushed aside the suggestion that she really did a lot to develop it.
“I was a cog,” she said. “Don’t make me super-advocate for injustice and super-responsible for what happens to their propaganda.”
Write to Evan Gershkovich at [email protected]
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