The journalist Marina Ovsjannikova, who became known through an anti-war protest and has since fled abroad, has been sentenced to eight and a half years in a prison camp in her home country of Russia. A court in Moscow found Ovsyannikova guilty in absentia of allegedly spreading false reports about the Russian army, the Interfax agency reported on Wednesday. The reason given was that she had spread pictures of her protest on the Internet.
The editor, who was then still employed by Russian state television, caused a stir shortly after the start of the war against Ukraine in March 2022 when she jumped into the picture in the middle of a live news broadcast and held up a protest poster.
After the action, Ovsjannikova, now 45, worked for the German newspaper “Welt”, but then returned to Russia and protested against the war again. In October 2022, her lawyer announced that she had now finally left her homeland for Europe. It is not known exactly where the mother of two children is currently staying. Her daughter left the country with Ovsjannikova, the son stayed with his father in Russia.
