On Wednesday, a Russian court sentenced former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who interrupted a news broadcast with a sign reading “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you,” to eight and a half years in prison in absentia. According to a court statement posted on Telegram, Ovsyannikova was found guilty of “knowingly spreading false information about the Russian Armed Forces.”
According to her lawyer, Ovsyannikova, 45, fled Russia with her daughter for an unidentified European nation a year ago after evading house detention and claiming she had no case to answer. She launched her first protest less than three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in what it called a “special military operation” on February 24, 2022.