Russian Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova escapes house arrest, Says she’s innocent

Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who has been under house arrest since she staged a series of protests against the war in Ukraine and was accused of spreading fake news, said on Wednesday that she had escaped because she had nothing to defend.

“I consider myself completely innocent, and since our state refuses to comply with its own laws, I refuse to comply with the measure of restraint imposed on me as of 30 September 2022 and release myself from it,” she said.

She sat on a pink sofa and delivered a speech to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, in which she criticised Vladimir Putin for the war. The footage was uploaded on Telegram.

“Put a tag like this on Putin,” she said, pointing to what looked like an electronic ankle bracelet.

Her attorney stated she had a court hearing at 10:00 Moscow time (0700 GMT), but authorities had not found her.

According to her attorney, investigators asked the court to convert the original house arrest order into a jail sentence if she is located, but the court refused.

During an evening news program on state television in March, Ovsyannikova walked out in front of the studio cameras holding a sign that read “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you,” attracting international attention.

Her kind of protest was labelled “hooliganism” by the Kremlin at the time.

The 44-year-old was sentenced to two months of house arrest in August for a demonstration she staged in July. She stood on a river embankment facing the Kremlin and held a sign declaring Putin a murderer and his army fascists.

If found guilty of distributing false information about the Russian military, she faced a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.

Suppressed until October 9, Russia Today stated on Saturday that she and her daughter, then 11 years old, had escaped, and their locations were unknown. They do not know how or why she left or where she went.

Russia enacted new laws on March 4 prohibiting the dissemination of “deliberately misleading information” about the armed forces eight days after invading Ukraine.