Russian TV journalist Marina Ovshannikova, famous for her live TV protest against the war in Ukraine, has been put on a wanted list by the Russian Interior Ministry.
At the beginning of August, a court in Moscow placed her under house arrest. So Ovsyannikova has slipped out of sight of the authorities after all.
Ovshannikova’s house arrest followed a protest at the Kremlin in mid-July. Then Ovshannikova held up a sign that read: “Putin is a murderer; his soldiers are fascists”. The journalist then held another protest sign in court, saying, “May the dead children haunt you in your dreams”.
The 44-year-old journalist is wanted because she has been charged with “spreading false information about the army”. She faces up to ten years in prison. Since her world-famous protest on Russian state television, in which she disrupted a news broadcast, Ovsyannikova has been arrested and fined several times for her protest against the war.
After Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, the government passed laws criminalizing criticism of the war. Ovshannikova accuses the authorities of intimidating opponents of the war. After her protest on Russian state television, she fled abroad but returned to Russia in July.