VoV Web Desk

Anti-war activist interrupts live Russian TV show

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page

MOSCOW: A live evening news programme on Russia’s state television channel was interrupted on Monday by a person who walked into the studio holding a poster protesting the war in Ukraine.

The moment was a risky protest in a country where independent media has been blocked or shuttered and it has become illegal to contradict the government’s narrative of the war.

An anchor was speaking during the newscast when a woman appeared on camera behind her holding a sign with no war scrawled in English across the top, with a message in Russian below calling on people not to believe Russian propaganda.

Within seconds, the news programme cut away to another scene.

Russia’s state TV regularly amplifies the government line that says troops entered Ukraine to save people from neo-Nazis and to defend Russians from a country that was preparing to attack. The invasion of Ukraine is being characterised in Russia as a special military operation.”

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.

Speaking in a video address early Tuesday, Ukr­a­ine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Ovsyan­nikova.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2022

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *