Russian Who Denounced War on Live TV Flees Country, Escapes House Arrest

A Russian journalist who protested the Ukraine war during a live broadcast has reportedly escaped from house arrest and fled the country, according to her lawyer.

Dmitry Zakhvatov told Reuters that his client, Marina Ovsyannikova, is now "under the protection of a European state." He would not disclose where Ovsyannikova ended up after fleeing since "it may turn out to be a problem" for her.

Ovsyannikova's daughter left the country with her, but her son remained in Russia, Zakhvatov said.

"Soon everything will be made public. We need a couple of weeks," he told Reuters.

Ovsyannikova drew global attention in March this year when she interrupted a Russian state television news broadcast by storming the Channel One network set, yelling over the anchor attempting to read the news, and holding up a sign with messages such as "Stop the war" and "They are lying to you here."

Ovsyannikova had been an employee of the station and then later was hired by the German newspaper Die Welt to work as a freelance correspondent.

Following the on-air protest in March, Ovsyannikova was briefly arrested and fined $527 (30,000 rubles) by a Russian court. She was also fined $650 (40,000 rubles) in August for allegedly discrediting the Russian armed forces on Facebook.

Her house arrest in August was the result of a separate protest in July in which she held a poster criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and placed dolls on the ground that were meant to symbolize dead children. She has been charged with spreading information about Russia's military deemed false by the government, and if convicted, faces up to 10 years in prison.

Earlier this month, Ovsyannikova's ex-husband said that she had escaped from house arrest with their daughter, though it was not clear at the time if she was still in Russia or had left the country, The Moscow Times reported.

Russian authorities placed her on the federal wanted list for breaching her pre-trial house arrest.

Michael Kimmage, professor and chair of the Catholic University of America's history department, told Newsweek that the fact that the protests came from a former Russian state media employee can make them especially harmful to Russia's image.

"It's one thing if you have a college kid who goes out into the street to protest the war. I mean, the Russian government is upset about that too," Kimmage said. "But this is somebody who's sort of nominally or maybe even sincerely until the war was part of the whole media structure apparatus. Sort of an employee, you could say, not of a normal media company, but an employee of the Russian government.

"And so to have somebody who's an insider like that do something like this is really quite damaging," he continued. "Then of course, in an age of social media, not only does it get picked up in Russia to the degree that it does, but it becomes a kind of international meme of Russian dysfunction. I think that that's another layer that's really unacceptable to the Russian government."

If she ever does return to Russia, what she faces there could be "very severe," Kimmage said. If the situation in Russia worsens in the next couple of months, Ovsyannikova's personal safety could even be put at risk, he added.

Newsweek reached out to Zakhvatov via OVD-Info, the independent human rights projects he works for, for further comment.