A Russian TV editor who interrupted a live broadcast of state TV news to protest Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been thanked by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky said in a telegram video:
‘I am grateful to those Russians who do not stop trying to convey the truth. To those who fight disinformation and tell the truth, real facts to their friends and loved ones’
The president also spoke directly to Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor on the Russian TV channel Pervyi Kanal, who held up a sign on the broadcaster’s main evening news show, Vremya, that said:
‘Stop the war! Don’t believe propaganda! They’re lying to you here! Russians against war.’
Channel One was the first TV station to broadcast in the Russian Federation after the Soviet Union broke up. It has more than 250 million viewers around the world. There was still time for the news anchor to speak before the producers cut to a news report quickly to stop Ovsyannikova from telling the truth about Putin’s war. She made a video at home before she did her brave thing and said: ‘Vladimir Putin is to blame for this aggression.’ That’s no longer the case. She could now be jailed for up to 15 years now. When the news outlet asked her lawyer for help, Dmitry Zakhvatov said he couldn’t find his client, even though it was said she was being held at a police station in Moscow’s Ostankino neighborhood.
On March 4, Vladimir Putin signed a law that makes it illegal for people to speak out against the conflict or report on it in a way that doesn’t come from the government. It is maybe another way for the Kremlin; to keep people quiet about the war and deal with Western sanctions. Prosecutors could have put her in prison for three to 15 years if they had followed the law.
Her lawyer Pavel Chikov, is helping her fight charges that she discredits the Russian armed forces. Russia has cracked down on any Russians who don’t want to go to war with the West. Some people say the war isn’t just a large-scale Russian invasion, but a lot of people in Moscow are protesting. One of the country’s top state TV shows had a lot of viewers last week, and some of the guests took the risk of getting into trouble with Vladimir Putin. They said that this invasion was worse than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
In the past, a video of an experiment to show how quickly; the Russian government is restricting free speech during the Ukraine war. People saw footage of policemen in Moscow taking a young woman away from her; in Manezhnaya Square just three seconds after she held a small paper sign up in the air. The sign itself didn’t say anything about Ukraine or any other issue; that was against the Kremlin or Vladimir Putin’s will. It said TWO WORDS instead. Even this caused a stampede of policemen in full riot gear who quickly took her out of the way. Earlier this week, the Kremlin put a blanket ban on social media. It slowed down Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as Western media and independent news sites. It wants to control the plot about its invasion of Ukraine.
