Russian state TV employee fined for anti-war protest

NEW YORK (AP) — A Russian state television employee who interrupted a live news program to protest the war in Ukraine was ordered by a court on Tuesday to pay a fine.

Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of the state broadcaster Canal One, entered the studio during Monday's evening news, carrying a poster with the English legends “No to War” and “Russians Against War”.

In a video made before her protest, Ovsyannikova said that her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian. He said that “Russia is the aggressor and one person, Vladimir Putin, is solely responsible for the aggression” and urged Russians to participate in anti-war protests.

Ovsyannikova spent the night in a police cell and on Tuesday the district court in Ostankino, Moscow, fined her 33,000 rubles (about $270) for organizing unauthorized actions in her call to participate in anti-war demonstrations.

The Investigative Committee, the main state investigative agency, is also studying whether it accuses it of spreading false information about the Russian armed forces, a punitive law passed on February 25, the day after the invasion of Ukraine. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison.

In a video speech on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Ovsyannikova for her courage.

Asked about Ovsyannikova's action, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it was an act of “disturbing peace” and that interfering with a live broadcast was a serious crime.

The Russian government has made a great effort to prevent independent sources of information about the war from reaching people. It has blocked the BBC's Russian-language service, the US-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Germany's Deutsche Welle and the Latvian website Meduza.

He has blocked Twitter and Facebook and banned Instagram for “extremist”.