One week after Marina Ovsjannikova’s TV protest, she is accused of treason. She tells Aftonbladet that she is scared.
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On Sunday night, the news director of the TV channel Pjervyj, Kirill Klejmenov, went directly and accused Marina Ovsjannikova of treason, the channel writes its Telegram profile.
According to Russian criminal law, treason can result in 20 years in prison.
– An emotionally charged action is one thing. But betrayal – it’s something else – when a person betrays his country and all of us that she has worked with for 20 years. A cold-blooded calculated betrayal, Klejmenov said during the broadcast.
Marina Ovsjannikova was the editor of Pjervyj before the TV stunt. In retrospect, she has quit her job. The state television channel is one of Russia’s largest channels in terms of number of viewers.
Shown newspaper front pages from the West
The news editor’s statements were preceded by a clip in which Ovshannikova’s protest was resubmitted. Numerous newspaper front pages were also shown from various media, several of them from the West.
Ovsjannikova has been hailed around the world after she stole all the attention on Monday night during a live TV broadcast on the Russian channel.
Since Monday last week, Ovsjannikova has been interviewed by several major newspapers and TV channels in the West. On Monday morning, Ovsjannikova spoke to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
– I’m scared because they accuse me of treason, she says the newspaper.
On the poster that Ovsjannikova showed during the protest, she wrote, among other things, “Stop the war. Do not believe the propaganda. Everyone is lying here ».
News director Klejmenov also states that Ovsjannikova had contact with the British embassy before she stood up behind the well-known news anchor Yekaterina Andreyeva.
“According to our information, she spoke to the British embassy,” he claims.
– I have to live normally. I have cool dogs, winners of Russia. I will raise puppies and sell them abroad. Now I will sell my car, switch to a small sub-compact car, limit myself in all expenses, then it will go well. In any case, I want to be better than the refugees from Ukraine, who have lost everything.
The French president has offered protection to Ovsjannikova at the French Embassy in Moscow, to which she has declined.
– I have refused to get political asylum in France because I am a patriot. I want to live in Russia, my children want to live in Russia. We have had a good life in Russia and I do not want to emigrate and lose ten years of my life.
To Meduza, she explains what happened until she interrupted the broadcast:
– It has matured with me and reached a turning point at the start of the war in Ukraine. It was impossible to endure: shock, fear, I could neither sleep nor eat, I was just numb. I did not think this could happen in principle …
– I, like everyone else, thought that this was another saber-rattling to bring about negotiations between Russia and NATO. Even when the People’s Republics of Donbass were recognized and the tanks were in motion, I thought they would stop within the borders of the Donbass territories. But when they went to Kyiv and started bombing Kharkiv, this picture of the world did not fit in my head, she says in the interview with the independent online newspaper Jellyfish.
Got a ticket
Ovsjannikova was not fined for interrupting the TV broadcast, but for a video she made before she cut off the TV broadcast, writes The Guardian.
In the video, she says that she was ashamed of having worked in the TV channel and for spreading propaganda from the Kremlin. She was fined 30,000 rubles, 2,500 Norwegian kroner at today’s exchange rate.
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