A live evening news program on Russia’s main state television channel was interrupted Monday by a person who walked into the studio holding a poster protesting the war in Ukraine.
An anchor was speaking during the newscast when a woman appeared on camera behind her holding a sign with the headline “no war” scrawled in English across the top, with a message in Russian below calling on people not to believe Russian propaganda.
The news program quickly cut away to another scene.
Russian anti-war protester Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia's state TV Channel One, holding up a sign behind a studio presenter and shouting slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine https://t.co/wxhwqx64zl pic.twitter.com/J8NeE4OB3y
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 15, 2022
An independent human rights group that monitors political arrests identified the woman as Marina Ovsyannikova. The group, OVD-Info, posted on its website that Ovsyannikova, who identified herself as an employee of the station, was taken into police custody.
Ovsyannikova spoke out against the war in a video on OVD-Info’s website.
“What is going on now is a crime,” she said. “Russia is an aggressor country and Vladimir Putin is solely responsible for that aggression.”
