(MP/ SG) April 12, 2022. A major German media outlet has, the BBC reports, hired Moscow journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, 43, as a correspondent for the German daily Die Welt to report from both Ukraine and Russia. Last month the mother of two teenage children stormed her Channel One employer’s main evening news with a dramatic anti-war placard, after which she was arrested and interrogated for 14 hours, deprives of both two nights’ sleep and any legal representation. It made international headlines.
Daughter of a Ukrainian father and Russian mother, she will appear both in print and on Die Welt‘s TV news channel. Die Welt stood for “what is being defended so vehemently by the courageous people on the ground in Ukraine right now,” she told the BBC. “Freedom.”
Ulf Porschardt, editor-in-chief of the Axel Springer-owned Welt Group, said the on-air protest “defended the most important journalistic ethics – despite the threat of state repression…I am excited to be working with her”.
Ms Ovsyannikova was issued with a 30,000 rouble ($280) fine for also posting a powerful anti-war video online. Only the Russian people had the power to “stop all this madness”, she said.
She left her job as an editor at the state-controlled station and announced from hiding that she would not be accepting an offer of asylum in France; she wanted to stay in Russia even though she feared for her safety.
She could still face further prosecution under Russian law, risking years in prison under a new penal code that criminalises spreading “fake news” about the Russian “special military operation” against Ukraine which it is now forbidden to call it a war. In one interview she said: “I am enemy No. 1 here” and spoke of rumours of high-ranking officials pressing for criminal charges for “hooliganism”..
Links:
- 24/03/22 Voice of America (VOA) report on live tv protest
- 21/03/22 VOA (Jamie Dettmer): Life under Russian occupation – hunger, fear, and abductions
- BBC : 17/03/22 Russians “zombified by propaganda” – state TV editor
- 15/03/22 Marina Ovsyannikova’s anti-war video (Eng subtitles)
- BBC 15/03/22: Russian journalist tells of 14-hour interrogation
- BBC: 02/03/22 Watching the war on Russian TV – a whole different story