A defiant Russian journalist held up a hand-written check in court docket on Thursday to proceed her protests about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Marina Ovsyannikova, who was once fired from her task at Russian state tv previous this yr for protesting in opposition to the battle, was once positioned beneath area arrest within the Moscow court docket pending an investigation and doable trial on fees of spreading false details about Russia’s defense force.
She was once charged over a boulevard protest remaining month, when she held up a banner that mentioned, “Putin is a killer, his soldiers are fascists. 352 children have been killed (in Ukraine). How many more children should die for you to stop?”
If convicted, Ovsyannikova faces as much as 10 years in jail beneath a brand new legislation that penalizes statements in opposition to the army. The legislation was once enacted in a while after Russian troops moved into Ukraine.
In the court docket on Thursday, Ovsyannikova held up a poster announcing “Let the dead children haunt you in your dreams.”
Marina Ovsyannikova first made international headlines on March 14, when she staged an on-air protest against Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
“Marina became a hostage of her own conscience and a hostage of her love for her children, you see,” her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, said after the hearing.
“She cannot be abroad because her children are here, and she cannot stay silent here because she’s a prisoner of her conscience,” Zakhvatov mentioned. “As a mom, she will’t keep silent. She sees what’s happening and it’s making her talk out.”
In March, Ovsyannikova seemed in the back of the anchor of a night Channel One information broadcast preserving a poster that mentioned “Stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here.” She give up her task on the channel, was once charged with disparaging the Russian army and fined 30,000 rubles (€270 on the time).
After quitting her task, Ovsyannikova turned into fairly of an activist, staging antiwar pickets and talking out publicly in opposition to the war.
She was once fined two extra instances in contemporary weeks for disparaging the army in a essential Facebook publish and with feedback she made at a court docket the place an opposition activist additionally accused of spreading false details about the army was once remanded into custody.
According to Net Freedoms, a felony help staff specializing in unfastened speech instances, as of Wednesday there have been 79 prison instances on fees of spreading false details about the army and as much as 4,000 administrative instances on fees of disparaging the defense force.
