A dissenting employee on Monday entered the studio during Russia’s most-watched evening news broadcast, holding up a poster saying “No War” and condemning Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.
The incident was a highly unusual breach of security at the tightly controlled state broadcaster Channel One. Its flagship 9pm news show called Time has run since the Soviet era and is watched by millions across the country, particularly by older Russians.
OVD-Info, which monitors detentions at opposition protests, identified the woman as Marina Ovsyannikova, saying that she works at Channel One as an editor and was now at a police station.
Photo: AFP
As the news anchor Yekaterina Andreyeva launched into an item about relations with Belarus, Ovsyannikova, who wore a dark formal suit, burst into view, holding up a handwritten poster saying “No War” in English.
Below, the poster said in Russian: “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here they are lying to you.”
It was signed in English: “Russians against the war.”
The protester managed to say a few phrases in Russian, including “Stop the war,” while Andreyeva, who has presented the news since 1998, tried to drown her out by speaking louder.
The channel then switched hastily to footage of a hospital.
In a statement carried by state news agency TASS, Channel One said that “an incident took place with an extraneous woman in shot. An internal check is being carried out.”
TASS cited a law enforcement source as saying that the woman has been detained and could be charged under legislation banning public acts that aim to “discredit the use of Russia’s armed forces.”
OVD-Info posted a video in which Ovsyannikova said her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian, and she does not see the countries as enemies.
“Unfortunately in recent years I worked on Channel One, making Kremlin propaganda, and I am now very ashamed of this,” Ovsyannikova said.
“I’m ashamed that I allowed lies to be spoken from the TV screen. I’m ashamed I allowed Russian people to be zombified,” she said.
“We were silent in 2014 when this was all just beginning,” Ovsyannikova said, apparently referring to Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and support for Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatists.
“We didn’t go to protests when the Kremlin poisoned [Alexei] Navalny. We just silently observed this anti-human regime, and now the whole world has turned away from us,” she said.
Russia has blocked or limited popular social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, all of which were widely used to make political statements.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS