Woman who protested Ukraine war on Russian state TV news was Kremlin propaganda machine insider
Marina Ovsyannikova went from a well-paid trusted employee to now facing the prospect of spending a decade in prison on charges of treason
Article content
A tenacious journalist and a highly trusted professional. That was how colleagues described the long-time Russian state TV producer who burst onto the set of a flagship news show with an anti-war banner in a stunning protest against Kremlin censorship.
Advertisement
After her five seconds on Channel One’s 9 p.m. news program, Marina Ovsyannikova, who has worked for state television for most of her life, was detained by onsite guards and taken to a police station next to Moscow’s sprawling TV headquarters where she was kept overnight. Yesterday afternoon a court fined her 30,000 roubles ($300 Cdn.) for an anti-war video statement which she had recorded before stepping on the set.
Ovsyannikova, 44, could still face a decade in prison on charges of treason, stemming from a new draconian law that restricts reporting of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The woman was not a random intruder angry at Russian state TV’s news coverage but the flesh and blood of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, a trusted employee.
Advertisement 3
“I have spent many, years producing Kremlin propaganda, and I’m very much ashamed of it now,” she said in a pre-recorded video message posted on her Instagram account, sporting a necklace comprised of the colours of the Ukrainian and Russian flags.
“I’m very much ashamed of putting lies on TV screens, for allowing to brainwash Russian people.”
Ovsyannikova has been described as an industry insider who rose from provincial obscurity to become a producer of Russia’s major night news TV shows hosted by the presenter whom Vladimir Putin once called his favourite anchor
Ovsyannikova, nee Tkachuk, was born in Odesa, a Ukrainian Black Sea port that is braced for a Russian attack. She said in her video statement that the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine was particularly painful to her due to her mixed Russian and Ukrainian heritage.
She grew up in southern Russia where she attended the Kuban State University’s journalism school with Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia’s RT channel.
Simonyan, often described as one of Russia’s most notorious propagandists, denied that the two were classmates but confirmed they were at the same journalism school and had worked together at Kuban, the state-owned TV channel in the regional capital Krasnodar.
Simonyan claimed that Ovsyannikova was a protegee of Vladimir Runov, who was then Kuban’s director general, who lobbied for Ovsyannikova to become special correspondent in Krasnodar for Kuban’s parent TV company.
Advertisement 5
In comments to local media yesterday Runov denied suggestions of having a special relationship with Ovsyannikova but said he had recommended her for a place on a management training course at a state-owned university as a “go-getting” employee.
Ovsyannikova was a popular TV presenter in southern Russia in the late 1990s before moving to Moscow.
In a Facebook post, she reminisced about her early years in regional television in Krasnodar, saying she worked “day and night, no time off or holidays: work was our life.”
A media manager in Krasnodar recalled her being an intrepid reporter. Zhdan Tikhonov, who produced news packages with her at Kuban in the late 1990s, told the 93.ru website that she was “good to work with. She was tenacious and was up for any work.”
Advertisement 6
An unnamed colleague said that Ovsyannikova grew up in Chechnya’s capital Grozny but moved out shortly before the war that started in 1994.
The Telegraph could not corroborate the reports.
Ovsyannikova was known in Krasnodar under the name of Tkachuk before she married Igor Ovsyannikov, a long-time director at RT.
The RT chief said he still worked for her channel: “They got divorced a long time ago and live separate lives: very different lives, clearly.”
Ovsyannikova’s social media revealed a glamorous life of a well-paid state TV employee with a penchant for selfies in expensive jewellery, fur coats and overseas holidays. On Instagram, she describes herself as a “happy mum” of two children who is into fitness and open-water swimming.
No comments:
Post a Comment