The Russian journalist had interrupted the state television newspaper in March 2022 to denounce the war in Ukraine, before fleeing to France.
More than a year after holding up an anti-war sign on Russian television, Marina Ovsiannikova testified on France Inter on Tuesday and explained her gesture, which she described as “suicidal protest”. “I wanted to destroy the propaganda” set up by the Kremlin, assures this dissident journalist. Under house arrest after her act, she was exfiltrated from Russia to Paris thanks to Reporters Without Borders in October 2022.
In March 2022, a few days after the outbreak of the offensive in Ukraine, Marina Ovsiannikova interrupted the “evening television” news of the major Russian channel Pervy Kanal, for which she worked. On her placard she had “wrote ‘No War’ for Western audiences and for Russians ‘it’s propaganda, they’re lying to you here'”, she says a year later. She tells her story in the book “No war: the incredible story of the woman who dared to oppose Putin” (Archipelago).
“I couldn’t keep quiet”
Through this gesture, made in full live, Marina Ovsiannikova wanted to attack above all propaganda, “Vladimir Putin’s main weapon”. After years of working and therefore participating in the dissemination of this propaganda, the war in Ukraine has finally become for her “a point of no return”. “I couldn’t keep quiet”, she says. She highlights in particular the fact that she too lived “the same situation in [son] childhood, when [sa] house in Grozny had been destroyed during the first Chechen war”.
Journalist and producer for Russian state television, Marina Ovsiannikova describes the Russian propaganda she witnessed and compares it to Nazi propaganda “by Joseph Goebbels” during World War II.
“For the past twenty years, Vladimir Putin has destroyed all independent media. All TV channels are under state control and from morning to night on all Russian channels there is only an incessant flow of propaganda. “
Marina Ovsiannikova, Russian journalistat France Inter
“Social networks” also being “stranded in Russia”the journalist indicates that “To have access to alternative sources of information today in Russia, you have to install a VPN on your mobile”which is not easy for people less comfortable with technology.
Vladimir Putin has “little by little destroyed all Russian independent TV”
The journalist admits having been silent for decades, but she explains above all that this propaganda did not appear overnight. “When I started working for Russian TV, it was the time of Boris Yeltsin and at that time there was no forbidden subject”, she remembers. When Vladimir Putin then came to power, the head of the Kremlin “little by little destroying all Russian independent TV”. From now on, journalists must “choose only news against Ukraine and the West”. However, they have good access to foreign channels and press dispatches from international agencies.
“I understood what was going on, but there was no other alternative, either to leave the trade or to go nowhere.”
Marina Ovsiannikova, Russian journalistat France Inter
She also explains that from the start of the conflict in Ukraine, journalists received “an order from the Kremlin never to say ‘war’ but ‘special military operation to liberate the peaceful populations of Donbass’not to pass “only videos from the Russian Ministry of Defense or the FSB”. “We were building a parallel reality”, she laments. She admits that Russian journalists have “dehumanized the Ukrainians”. “We didn’t talk about them not as people, but as Nazis, we did everything to stir up the hatred of Russians against Ukrainians”she regrets.