Marina’s feet were in the mud. She was trudging towards Russia’s border with her 11-year-old daughter.
Half a year earlier, Russia invaded Ukraine.
On March 14, 2022, Marina was, as usual, working in the newsroom for Russia’s most popular state-run news program. But this day was different. She was looking for an opportunity, an opening.
The guard on site was on her phone, distracted.
It was time.
When the broadcast went live, Marina burst into the set. She went behind the news anchor and held up a big sign. It said:
“No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
The camera cut away within six seconds.
Marina Ovsyannikova was born to a Russian mother and a Ukrainian father who died when she was a baby. She grew up in Chechnya, a Russian-speaking region with a history of seeking autonomy. Russian soldiers crushed the area in the 90s, so her family fled.
The war left a scar on her.
After college, Marina joined the state-run Channel One TV channel as a journalist in Moscow in 2002. Her job: cherry-pick broadcasts to make the West look bad. She was in the propaganda role for twenty years. It paid well and allowed her to raise two children in a safe, gated community.
However, something changed when Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2022.
As part of her job, she saw clips of villages destroyed by strikes. She watched Ukrainian refugees struggle to escape. It reminded Marina of her childhood.
If she continued the work as she had in the last two decades, her hands would be “covered with Ukrainian blood,” she said. “The war simply became a point of no return. It was no longer possible to keep quiet.”
After the extraordinary anti-war protest on TV, Marina faced days of interrogations by the FSB, Russia’s security service. She resigned from her job and paid a fine.
Many Ukrainians were skeptical of her protest, given her prior history as the state’s mouthpiece. Her 18-year-old son said she had ruined her family. Her ex-husband, who works for another state-run TV channel, attempted to take over the custody of their two children.
In July 2022, she protested again outside the Kremlin against the killing of children in Ukraine. This time, she faced a criminal offense with up to 15 years of prison.
Her lawyer urged her to escape while she was on house arrest.
With the help of organizations that support reporters and dissidents, Marina left Moscow on a Friday night in October 2022. She cut off her electronic monitor, changed car six times, and finished her journey on foot.
Marina is now in exile in France with her daughter Arisha.