A Russian court has fined Marina Ovsyannikova 30,000 rubles (£215) for violating protest laws after she broke into a live news broadcast on Channel One during an emergency demonstration against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The fine was a relatively lenient sentence for a protest that shocked Russian TV viewers and drew cheers from Western leaders. Emmanuel Macron of France even offered her consular “protection” and said he would take her case to Vladimir Putin.
Ovsyannikova was fined in court not for sneaking onto the set of Channel One, but for a video message she made before the protest, in which she said she was “ashamed” of working for Channel One and spreading “Kremlin propaganda.”
“It really was one of the hardest days of my life,” she told reporters after a brief hearing. “I went two days without sleep. I was interrogated for over 14 hours. They did not allow me to contact my family or provide me with any legal assistance. I was in a pretty difficult position.” She also said she was not surprised by the release because she has two children.
Friends and supporters feared the worst after Ovsyannikova disappeared into police custody for almost 24 hours after her arrest, suspecting that prosecutors might be preparing serious criminal charges against her. Russian state media also reported that a powerful investigative committee had opened a case against her.
Lawyers spent most of the night combing local police stations to find her. She was detained on Tuesday evening after she ran to the set of the evening news with a banner that read: “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here you are being lied to.
She finally reappeared on Tuesday evening in a Moscow courtroom. In the photo next to her lawyer, she appears unharmed and is wearing the same outfit and necklace in the colors of the Ukrainian flag as the day before.
The Kremlin suggested that Ovsyannikova violated the laws on hooliganism, which can lead to years in prison. Lawyers said prosecutors could still bring tougher charges against Ovsyannikova, but after Tuesday’s hearing, that’s unlikely.
“There are still risks of Ovsyannikova being prosecuted, but the chances of that happening have drastically decreased since the fine she received today,” said Pavel Chikov, head of the international human rights group Agora. “She was fined not for her speech, but for a video message in which she called on people to protest.”
“No case has yet been opened against her speech, and the prosecutor’s office can still make such a decision,” he continued. “But the fact that she has already received a quick punishment indicates that a political decision has been made not to prosecute her further.”
Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst and founder of R Politik, said Kremlin advisers are likely to disagree on how to deal with Ovsyannikova’s case. While some may have lobbied for a tough response, others may have feared a backlash if the mother-of-two was treated too harshly.
“No one was prepared for something like this in advance,” she said. “And the Kremlin wouldn’t have a ready-made template for how to respond.”
Following Ovsyannikova’s protest, several well-known journalists reportedly resigned from their positions in state media.
“I’m interested in the amount of discontent within the system,” Stanovaya said. “Either now this wave is coming to naught. Or we may see protests like this more and more often—those loud, desperate acts where people make the same gestures.”