Source: Reuters
After conducting a series of lone rallies against the war in Ukraine, Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who is accused of distributing false information, claimed on Wednesday that she had escaped house arrest because she had no case to answer.
She said, “I consider myself entirely innocent, and as our state refuses to obey its own laws, I refuse to obey the measure of restraint placed on me as of 30 September 2022 and remove myself from it.
She addressed Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service in a video that was uploaded to Telegram, criticising President Vladimir Putin for the conflict while sitting on a pink sofa.
She pointed to what seemed to be an electronic ankle bracelet and added, “Put a tag like this on Putin.”
She was scheduled to appear at a court hearing at 10:00 Moscow time (07:00 GMT), according to her lawyer, but detectives were unable to find her.
Investigators requested that the court convert the initial home arrest order for her into jail time should she be located, but the judge declined, according to her attorney.
In March, Ovsyannikova attracted notice by exiting in front of studio cameras during a state television nightly news show holding a sign that read “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you.”
At the time, the Kremlin referred to her demonstration as “hooliganism.”
In response to a protest in July in which the 44-year-old stood on a river embankment across from the Kremlin and held up a sign labelling Putin a murderer and his army fascists, she was sentenced to two months of home detention in August.
If proven guilty of the allegation of disseminating false information about the Russian military, she could have received a term of up to 10 years in jail.
Her home detention was supposed to last until October 9, but on Saturday, the state-run news agency Russia Today reported that she had fled with her daughter, age 11, and that it was unclear where they were. It is still unknown how she left and where she went.
On March 4, eight days after invading Ukraine, Russia issued new laws prohibiting disparaging or disseminating “deliberately false information” about the armed forces.
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