It is these gestures that we do not forget. On March 14, 2021, as Russian troops swoop down on major cities in Ukraine, Marina Ovsiannikova, TV reporter Pervy Kanal, Majority state-owned, sneaks past evening news cameras Vremia. In the background of the presenter who continues impassively to read her teleprompter, she unfurls a colorful sign with messages in three languages: “No to war”can we read there, or ‘Don’t believe the propaganda’, “They are lying to you here”.
In a few hours, this act of civil disobedience, which earned her arrest and then sentenced to a fine of 30,000 rubles (€250), went around the world and propelled Marina Ovsiannikova to the rank of a figure in the resistance to propaganda. and the war waged by the Russian authorities.
That day, she spent what she herself would call ” point of no return “. She resigns, and begins to multiply acts aimed at denouncing the « crimes » of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Actions that will earn him the Vaclav Havel Prize for creative dissidence from the Human Rights Foundation on May 25.
Propaganda you Kremlin
On July 15, very close to the Kremlin, she places three bloody dolls on the ground, and raises a new poster on which she wrote in marker: “Putin, murderer. His soldiers, fascists. 352 children died. How many more have to die for you to stop? “.
Less than a month later, on Thursday August 11, accused of having “discredited” the Russian army, she was placed under house arrest by the Basmanny district court until October 9. She faces up to ten years in prison.
Until her coup on March 14, however, there was no indication that Marina Ovsiannikova would embody the most vocal opposition to the government on Russian territory. While on her Telegram channel, she says she has ” shame ” to have contributed to “zombify” the russian people “by doing Kremlin propaganda” on television for years, she shared, in her life before, on social networks, glamorous selfies and photos of chic vacations in Mediterranean seaside resorts.
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Its origins explain its reversal. Born in 1978 in Odessa, to a Russian mother and a Ukrainian father buried in her native land where her aunts and cousins still live, she left to live in Grozny at the age of 1 year. After a childhood that she often describes as marked by armed conflict, she is said to have started her career on public television VGTRK after graduating from the Academy of National Economy in Moscow.
Later at Pervy Kanal she works “in the field of international news”she says in the German magazine The mirror. A position that exposes him to “images from international agencies” that his channel refuses to broadcast. “Not same (pictures of) our own deaths. »
Today, his choice costs him more than the proceedings brought against him by the Russian authorities. Shortly after her resignation, she left for Germany to work briefly for the newspaper The world. Her ex-husband, Igor, a director for the Russia Today channel, opposes their two children, aged 18 and 11, joining their mother and is launching legal proceedings to obtain their sole custody. His son, who chose to live with his father, accuses him of ” destroy (their) vie ».
It was to be close to them that she decided to return to Russia after her stay in Germany, despite Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to offer her political asylum. But not only. The morning before her arrest, August 10, the one who refuses to pay her fines for not “finance the war”,told France Info: « When a person inside Russia speaks against the war, it is much louder than when he is abroad. »