German media outlet taps Russian protester

Germany’s Welt media outlet has hired Marina Ovsyannikova, the journalist who interrupted Russia’s most-watched television news show with an anti-war protest last month in a rare public criticism of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ovsyannikova, 43, will serve as a freelance correspondent for the Welt newspaper and its television channel reporting from Russia and Ukraine, according to a statement Monday from parent company Axel Springer SE. She speaks Russian and English, but not German, the firm said.

The journalist was a producer at Russia’s staterun Channel One when she interrupted its flagship news program Vremya with a poster demanding an end to the war. She was detained for 14 hours and fined $370.

The Kremlin has cracked down on media since the start of the war in February. Virtually all of Russia’s independent outlets have been forced to close or move abroad, while the authorities have banned Facebook and Instagram in an effort to control access to information.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, said Monday it would “right” to revoke the citizenship of people considered “traitors,” specifically mentioning Ovsyannikova and her new job in a post on his Telegram channel. Current law doesn’t allow revoking citizenship and banning entry, he said.

Ovsyannikova said she made her protest because “moral principles were more important than wellbeing, peace of mind, and orderly living.”

“The war in Ukraine was the point of no return and silence was no longer an option,” she wrote in an article published Monday on the Welt website, adding that she has faced “incredible harassment” on social media, including allegations that she works for the Russian or British intelligence services.

“Everyone is looking for a hidden meaning and coming up with the most unbelievable conspiracy theories,” she said. “Nobody wants to believe that it was a citizen’s emotional protest.”