Tuesday, March 15, 2022
15 years for five seconds? The heroine from Russian state television
Berlin newspaper
15 years for five seconds? The heroine from Russian state television
Ulrich Seidler - 1 hour ago
A few seconds have changed the life of Marina Ovzyannikova, a Russian mother with a family, decent work and hobbies . The employee of the Russian state broadcaster First Channel enters the studio at 9 p.m. on Monday evening during the main news broadcast, runs ten steps into the room, searches for the frame of the TV cameras and holds up a protest poster: “Stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda. You're being lied to here.” The live director reacts after five seconds – not fast enough. Ovsyannikova was able to yell "No war!" several times, the pictures were in the can before the switchover and are now spreading on social media, where Ovsyannikova is celebrated as a heroine.
You can't see what happened next. Colleagues will have led Marina Ovsyannikova out of the studio and called the police. If the laws of the unjust state have their way, she faces up to 15 years in prison "for distorting the purpose, role and tasks of the Russian armed forces during military and other special operations". But when do Putin's secret service henchmen stick to the law?
Before her performance, Marina Ovzyannikova posted a selfie video on Twitter wearing a necklace in Russian and Ukrainian colors. She clearly describes what can officially only be called a “special military operation” as a “fratricidal war” and as a crime for which Putin is responsible and whose shame “ten generations of our descendants cannot wash away”.
Ovzyannikova was born in Odessa in 1978. According to her Facebook profile, she has two children, likes swimming and dogs, especially golden retrievers. In her Twitter video she mentions her parents, the mother is Russian, the father is Ukrainian, between whom there was never any hostility. And she talks about her shame at helping spread Kremlin propaganda: "I'm ashamed that I let Russians be turned into zombies." She hopes the same for her compatriots: “We, the Russian people, can think and are clever. It's up to us to stop all this madness. Go demonstrate. fear nothing. You can't lock us all up."