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When the television announcer RussiaMarina Ovsyannikov, openly condemned the war on Ukraine and the propaganda that surrounds him, his protests highlight a wave of resignations sweeping broadcasters and staff on Russia’s tightly controlled state television.
As reported by the BBC, Thursday (17/3/2022), the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to the point of thanking Ovsyannikov, and calling on anyone who worked for what he called the Russian propaganda system to resign.
Zelensky even warned that any journalist working in what he called Russia’s fourth branch of power was at risk of being sanctioned and brought before an international tribunal for “justifying war crimes”.
A number of supporters of the President Vladimir Putin Russian state television has also been sanctioned, such as Vladimir Solovyov who hosted Russia’s largest television talk show Rossiya-1, and Margarita Simonyan who accused anyone who felt ashamed to be a Russian citizen not really being Russian.
Russian state television is required to follow Kremlin guidelines. So who resigned to protest the war in Ukraine?
Hours after Ovsyannikov launched his protest against the war in Ukraine, three resignations were reported. Channel One journalist Zhanna Agalakova resigned from her job as a European correspondent, while two other journalists — Llia Gildeyeva and Vadim Glusker — left NTV. Gildeyeva has been on NTV broadcaster since 2006, while Glusker has worked at NTV for the last 30 years.
Rumors about Russian journalists resigning surfaced from VGTRK, the state television group All-Russia. Journalist Roman Super said people were withdrawing en masse from news site Vesti, but that report has not been confirmed.
Maria Baronova became the most prominent figure to resign from RT, formerly known as Russia Today. As RT’s former editor-in-chief, Baronova told the BBC this month that Putin had ruined Russia’s reputation and the economy had died.
Watch the video: Ukraine’s Covid-19 situation in the midst of conflict with Russia
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