Just who is the woman who held up an anti-war protest sign live on Russian state television?
What led her there, and what's next for her?
Keep watching for all the details.
The world has watched in horror as Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, has waged
war against Ukraine.
According to Al Jazeera, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed or injured, and
both sides of the conflict have sustained thousands of military casualties.
Although there are pockets of support for Putin's invasion, most of the world is united
in its opposition to it.
Protests have taken place across the world from Berlin to Washington, D.C., and on every
continent except Antarctica.
Protests are even taking place in Russia, which has been notorious for state control
of the media for over 100 years.
The BBC reports that since the resurgence of the conflict in February, nearly 15,000
Russians have been detained for protesting the war.
One protester in particular, Marina Ovsyannikova, has received more attention than most for
interrupting the broadcast of an evening news on the state-owned television station Channel
One with an anti-war poster.
Veteran anchor Ekaterina Andreeva was reading a report about how to mitigate the effects
of international sanctions on the Russian economy.
Ovsyannikova entered the shot with her sign in hand.
In English, it said "No war" and "Russians against war."
In Russian it said,
"Stop the war.
Don't believe the propaganda.
They're lying to you."
Ovsyannikova also chanted "Stop the war" and "No to war" until the TV station cut away
to another report.
The New York Times reports she was promptly detained by Russian police after the incident.
Ovsyannikova was a Channel One employee.
Channel One is Russia's largest broadcaster, and the news show, Vremya, is watched by millions
of people every night.
Shortly after Ovsyannikova's protest, Russia-based human rights group OVD-Info released a pre-recorded
video statement she had made.
According to a translation of the video by the Telegraph, Ovsyannikova says in it that
she facilitated Kremlin propaganda at Channel One and is very ashamed of it, calling out
media complacency over the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2020 poisoning of opposition
leader Alexei Navalny.
She also says that her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian.
She calls on Vladimir Putin by name to end his aggression in Ukraine.
"The responsibility for this aggression lies on the conscience of only one person.
This man is Vladimir Putin."
She finishes her statement by calling on the Russian people to protest, saying only they
can stop the war.
Newsweek reported that OVD-Info said that Ovsyannikova was being held at a police station
in Moscow, but none of her lawyers were able to confirm that information.
There were fears that because she was being held without access to representation, she
would face a harsh punishment.
A new Russian law that prohibits broadcasting views that disagree with the state line on
Ukraine carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
On March 15, the BBC reported that she had been fined $280 and released.
She told reporters that she hadn't slept in two days and had been questioned for 14 hours.
It's not clear if she will face more charges, though.
The $280 fine is for the video statement made before her interruption of the news broadcast,
so she remains in legal jeopardy.
Thankfully for her, her attorney, Anton Gashinsky, was the Belarusian lawyer who was responsible
for freeing Vitali Shkliarov, a U.S. citizen who was detained in Belarus for three months.
According to Buzzfeed News, Shkliarov, who had previously worked for the Obama administration,
was detained for working with the opposition to Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.
Gashinsky told CBS News of Ovsyannikova,
"Of course she is worried.
She has said that during the court hearing.
But she also said there was no option for her but to do this.
In addition to high-powered lawyers, Ovsyannikova also has some powerful allies.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked her for her courage, and French president
Emmanuel Macron has said he is looking into offering her asylum either at the French embassy
or France itself.
So who, exactly, is Marina Ovsyannikova?
The bio on her private Instagram account says she enjoys golden retrievers, open-water swimming,
and being a mother.
According to her Facebook bio, she swam across both the Volga River and the Bosporus Strait.
She likes to travel, running, and working out.
She attended Kuban State University in Krasnodar, 100 miles north of Sochi on the Black Sea.
In 2005, she attended the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration,
an institution founded by Vladimir Putin in 2010 with the intent of training Russia's
future political elite.
One of her journalism classmates in Krasnodar was Margarita Simonyan, now editor-in-chief
of RT, Russia's state-controlled English-language news channel.
Ovsyannikova's ex-husband is also apparently a director for RT, according to Novye Izvestia.
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