A protester stormed onto a live broadcast of Russia’s top news show on Monday evening and shouted “Stop the war!” while waving a sign that read, “They’re lying to you here.”
The viral moment occurred during a broadcast of Vremya, a primary Kremlin news outlet “watched by millions of Russians every evening,” according to the New York Times. Take a look:
The woman has been identified as Marina Ovsyannikova, who previously worked for the state-run Channel 1 News. The Russian rights group backing her protest also released a video of Ovsyannikova saying that she is “deeply ashamed” of having peddled “Kremlin propaganda.”
“We are Russian people, thinking and smart ones,” she said in the video. “Only we have the power to stop all this craziness.”
Ovsyannikova’s protest during the Vremya broadcast occurred as the anchor discussed Russian and Belarussian tactics to handle the Western sanctions. As Ovsyannikova chanted, “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here,” the anchor, Yekaterina Andreyeva, continued on script until the show cut out.
“Afterward, according to the Tass state news agency, Channel 1 said it was ‘investigating an incident with an outsider in the frame during a live broadcast,'” noted the New York Times. “Ovsyannikova was detained after the protest and was being held at a small police station at Moscow’s Ostankino broadcasting center.”
Police officers detain a demonstrator during a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Moscow on February 24, 2022. (ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Earlier this month, major U.S. broadcast news outlets ceased operations in Russia after the Kremlin introduced a new law that would jail anyone spreading fake news or misinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Russian officials claimed that the United States and Western Europe have been intentionally spreading fake news to spark an uprising against the Kremlin.
People in violation of the law could face up to 15 years in prison. CNN, ABC, CBS, Bloomberg, BBC, and CBC all announced they would be discontinuing their broadcasts.
“CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward,” a network spokesperson said Friday.
“The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country,” Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said in a statement.
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