MOSCOW: Former Russian state television journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who protested President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine offensive during a live broadcast, has fled the country after being put on a wanted list, her lawyer said on Monday.

“Ovsyannikova and her daughter left Russia a few hours after departing from the address where she was under house arrest. They are in Europe now,” Ovsyannikova’s lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov said.

“They are fine. They are waiting until they can talk about publicly, but for now it is not safe,” he added.

The former editor at Channel One made global headlines in March when she barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news, holding a poster reading “No War”.

She was placed under house arrest from August after she held a lone protest in mid-July near the Kremlin carrying a poster that read “Putin is a murderer. His soldiers are fascists”.

Law enforcement charged the 44-year-old with distributing information about the Russian armed forces deemed to be false by the government — a charge that could see her jailed for 10 years.

Zakhvatov previously said that Ovsyannikova has been put on Russia’s wanted list for having evaded house arrest.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2022