A former Russian state television journalist famous for her on-air protest against the war in Ukraine has escaped house arrest, she confirmed today on camera.
In her first remarks since fleeing pretrial house arrest earlier this week, Marina Ovsyannikova said she considers herself “completely innocent” and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of destroying the Ukrainian people and Russia ’s male population.
In a written post alongside the video, Ms Ovsyannikova said that she was freeing herself from the two-month house arrest that was imposed by a Moscow court in August.
“I consider myself completely innocent, and since our state refuses to comply with its own laws, I refuse to comply with the measure of restraint imposed on me as of 30 September 2022 and release myself from it,” she wrote.
The 44-year-old made a name for herself in mid-March, when she interrupted a live news broadcast to hold up a sign reading: “Stop the war, they’re lying to you.”
In August, she was alleged by the Kremlin to have spread fake news and given two months’ house arrest for a protest a month earlier, when she held up a poster that described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderer” and Moscow’s troops “fascists”.
In a video after fleeing home arrest, the 44-year-old said the Russian warmonger should be tried for “genocide of the people of Ukraine”.
She showed on camera how she had been tagged on her ankle, and said: “Dear staff of the Federal Prison Service. Tag Putin with a bracelet like this.
It is him, and not me, who needs to be isolated from society and tried for the genocide of the people of Ukraine. And for the fact that he is massively destroying the male population of Russia.”
Her lawyer made clear she was skipping a scheduled court appearance today.
She faced a sentence of up to ten years in prison if found guilty of the charge of spreading fake news about Russia's armed forces, under a law promulgated at the beginning of the war.
She claims she is being prosecuted for “telling the truth” and her husband was quoted by Russian media as saying that she had fled house arrest with their 11-year-old daughter.
Last month, while sat in a courtroom, she drew a sign which read "no to mobilisation".
After her initial protest shortly after the war broke out, she was offered asylum by France but rejected it, adding that she wanted to return to Russia in order to fight for custody of her two children.
