What Happened to Marinna Ovsyannikova, State TV Picketer? Was She Legit?

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

 

This was drafted in March 16, 2022 and then not published for some reason, I suppose because so many Russian colleagues were shushing me and seemed to NEED Ovsvyannikova's story to be "true" in order to encourage other establishment media figures to break with the regime.

 

I hope they're past that now, although I know a few who are not.

 

 

***

 

I'm happy to go on record as a skeptic of the dramatic story of the top Russian domestic propaganda channel airing a staged one-woman picket with a sign "It's all lies!" as a Kremlin kukla anchor droned on about glorious Russian troops liberating grateful Ukrainian villagers.

 

Everybody is trying to parse the story of Marina Ovsyannikova who staged the anti-war protest on live TV. Was she a false flag op? What happens to her next will tend to confirm her authenticity -- or not. Currently she's missing. If she recants on state TV tomorrow...

— CAFitzpatrick 🌻 (@catfitz) March 15, 2022

So Ovsyannikova, the TV1 gal, is trending on Moscow Twitter https://t.co/En1AzwUZAi I continue to believe this story is a bit of chum that too many people have bit down hard on, and will come to regret it. The question is: whose chum?

— CAFitzpatrick 🌻 (@catfitz) March 16, 2022

 

Was It Live?

 

The questions to ask aren't about whether it was a real live broadcast -- as a former producer explains, and as I can confirm having worked at one time as a translator on the local

public television station that broadcast Russian state news (fortunately a failed Polish entrepreneurial project), it was live and she really did pop in like a Saturday Night Live skit (and hey, where is that SNL skit imitating this stunt?!). 

 

The next scene to which they cut which contains medical personnel in a hospital corridor isn't some rich Aesopian message but merely the next story in the queue. So let's take that off our list of queries. It was live, and that was not the point. Yes, it really was live, guys. But not any more, as now there is a report from an independent journalist formerly of BBC and Meduza (so really, really independent!) as well as a former Lenta.ru journalist that TV1 now has a one-minute time delay to ensure that sort of thing never repeats.

 

Was It Stage-Managed By More Than the Protester?

 

Could it, even live, have been stage-managed? I think there was signs that it was, but the question is, by whom? And for what purpose? For you to even know about this stunt, there had to be at least two other people involved, many more -- the person who filmed her pre-recorded message, and the person who ensured it got maximum play on first Russian, then world social media.

 

So it was managed, but was it a 360 degree Kremlin propaganda package micro-managed by FSB psy-war specialists? Not likely.

 

As one colleague asked, how would any kind of Kremlin false-flag op involving this hitherto unknown TV1 propagandist serve Putin's agenda? It can't look good for Putin if his often pre-recorded but still loyalist-while-live national TV broadcasts can be invaded by spontaneous anti-war solo picketers of the kind routinely dragged away by their arms or legs or hair from anywhere near Red Square or indeed any public square. Although solo pickets are technically allowed under the Russian law on demonstrations -- we can expect a "spontaneous" redaction of this law soonest to specify "without media present" -- thus ending the scores of blurry and crooked camera-phone arrest photos on the pages of my still remaining Facebook friends from Russia. A mobile phone that can reach 2000 people on social media can be characterized as media that failed to register under the Russian press law.

 

It might be easy for a formerly loyal TV worker drone to pop up with a protest, but how will she ensure that it is taped, and that this message gets out to the world (the capacity for snuffing out such an event is enormous as I will explain later.

 

She Had Help

 

Here, she obviously had help -- she planned the action, she made a pre-recorded message to release after her expected arrest, and was able to quickly get it to Ksenia Sobchak , usually described as a "media manager and socialite," the chief "sort of" opposition TV personality.  Sobchak was the ideal link for such a caper because while she has at times had her shows canceled, she always seems to get a new one, and has hung on to her access as the daughter of the former mayor of St. Petersburg. Whoever gave it to Sobchak would be an acquaintance who could vouch for its authenticity so that she could instantly put it on her Telegram channel called "Warning, News!" which has 1.49 million subscribers.  Telegram is the venue of choice for Russian message-sending from all quarters as it is quasi-independent, not technically part of the Kremlin media empire, but not part of the now-banned Western empire of Facebook, Instagram, etc. (My many questions over the years about all the fairy dust sprinkled on Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, and all his works I will save for another day.)

 

From Telegram, the haven of news junkies for whom even mainlining Twitter is never enough, it reached mainstream media. Yesterday, Marina was a top trend on Moscow Twitter; today she's gone.

 

Sobchak isn't exactly a figure to inspire hope in Ukrainians or long-time Russian activists -- some felt she seemed more upset about losing her YouTube channel revenue than the deaths of people in Ukraine. (Of course, every impression like this has to be researched to see if in fact she attempted more protest but was smothered.) The operative point is that Sobchak is connected yet relatively free to speak out and make the synapse jump between the communities of TV propagandists and establishment social media critics -- and reach the Western media. Yes, you can find screenshots of Sobchak's loyalist "Krym Mash" (Crimea is Ours") sentiment on Twitter which she may have deleted, but it should be seen in context of all her statements on Crimea still standing. which is still critical.

 

So the questions I've said needed to be asked now are not "was it live" or "did someone choreograph it" but chiefly: why was she released from lock-up?! 

 

Two Court Cases

 

In an unfolding story like this, many Russia-watchers like to one-up you with late-breaking news that appears to undo your theory, i.e. the fine point that she is technically facing two court cases. One  is a charge under the administrative code Art. 20, very frequently used for tens of thousands of anti-war protests, for unauthorized picketing. As a first-time offender, that got her only 30,000 rubles ($280, but possibly half that by the time I finish typing this sentence given Russia's near default under sanctions). It might have been 3 days or 15 days but wasn't, but she faces another charge for "organizing an unauthorized mass protest" -- obviously if you appear on national TV, even as a solo flyer, it can become "mass".

 

It didn't. Novaya Gazeta, a leading independent paper barely hanging on when others have closed published a picture of the incident with the text of her sign blanked out. But people even with blank posters, or just literally the phrase "Two Words" (hinting at "no to war" which is just to words in the Russian language) are dragged away commonly if they don't have a permit -- which are not always granted and if given, forced on the outskirts of town, far from view.

 

But in addition to the charges that seemingly led to a mere slap on the wrist, she faces more serious charges that could lead to 5-10 years under Art. 207 of the criminal code, according to an independent lawyer.

 

There is an old Soviet joke about how people were free to protest on Red Square. It's just that they weren't free afterwards. So what happens to Marina O. afterwards is the space to watch.

 

Such lawyers are not saying her case will fall under the new draconian law about disparaging the "special operation" which is punishable by 15 years. But we don't know yet, really, what her case will involve by the time it gets to court again.

 

Her act becomes more understandable -- and possibly even more important -- if it is the tip of an iceberg involving sub-rosa mass protest of some kind within state TV walls.

 

There are reports of other state TV resignations or slow-downs, some less visible, even if during a work shift, others through sick-outs. Maybe we will see mass firings of the disloyal, or even just two dismissals and arrests -- as with the FSB operatives responsible for the war in Ukraine recently -- or maybe we will see mass resignations, but so far -- not.

 

And far from actually explaining away the mystery of her release (only one of her cases was heard in court; the other is pending) the fine point only ADDS to the mystery -- with TWO cases, how on earth can she released from Matrosskaya Tishina, the prison I translate as "Sailors' Haven," which some frightened protesters manage to signal to their families by posting an innocuous phrase  to social media or a DM to friends like "Enjoying a walk around Moscow" -- but with the location clearly visible on the cell phone message. How?

 

You don't even have to wonder about her perfectly put-together foreign-made outfit and make-up after two sleepless nights or look to see if she is wearing Louboutins like in the Leningrad video; you can just ask why she wasn't held like scores of other famous or unknown people with several charges like this who are *kept in jail*. And the fact is, like so much that goes on in Moscow, we don't know and I personally think it's ok to be skeptical and have questions.

 

Disappointing Heroines

 

You can skip ahead to more current concerns but it helps to understand that very few heroes from Russia and this part of the world in general live up to the expectations of their Western -- or even Eastern -- admirers.

 

If you accept such stories as authentically sincere and heroic, you can be very disappointed later. I'm old enough to remember the dramatic story of Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was Joan of Arc,  Amelia Earhart, and Nadezhda Popova all rolled into one, whose release from Russian prison came after a surge of sustained world-wide protest, but who wound up with a ruined political career when she went to negotiate with the leaders of the soi-disant People's Republic of Donetsk and even less disant Luhansk Democratic People's Republics, and was willing to give up Crimea to stop the war. And I speak as someone who went over every inch of ground on the road to Luhansk from every available footage of the scene on the bridge where Igor Kornelyuk, a Ukrainian-born state TV anchor without a bullet-proof vest, and other crew members were killed by Ukrainian shelling as they were  being taken around by DNR fighters, in an effort to exonerate Savchenko from the claim that she was the military spotter who guided the mortar fire on to the Russian TV group -- a charge I think can be demonstrated as false.

 

So you do have to ask the age-old Leninist question of "who profits," as well as look for the Louboutins. And even if the TV1 worker drone's stunt is thoroughly authentic and had help from genuine opposition/newly former establishment quarters, it is still possible for Putin not only to make lemons from this lemonade but to totally sugar the pitcher.

 

In the grand picture, as Ukrainians have pointed out, for at least two days, hopefully not more, the world was riveted to the absorbing tale of a brave Russian woman standing up against the war machine, and didn't see small towns that most of the world had never heard of until now essentially falling to the Russians, despite brave Ukrainian resistance battles still ongoing.

Here’s my prediction for #Ovsyannikova thread. You will forget about Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Kyiv... & will be too busy discussing how near is the end of totalitarianism in Russia when a propagandist does an anti-war performance. Wanna bet?

— Viktoriia Zhuhan (@uziaka) March 14, 2022

 

#notallrussians #WARINUKRAINE
So about this "live performance".
It looks like one NO WAR poster (for English-speaking Russians, I presume) is enough to make it all about good Russians suffering while Mariupol is just being destroyed, nothing serious.
Masters to shift the blame. pic.twitter.com/8MpNAIBqMg

— Ostap Ukrainets (@Ukrostap) March 15, 2022

 

I could add that as an extra bonus from the Kremlin propagandist perspective,  if you were a Fox News supporter and Trump voter, you were distracted from perhaps changing your mind over the death of a Fox News reporter in Ukraine, the other brave journalist story of the hour. It's not "genius". People are getting killed.

 

Do Russians Suffer?

 

Some Russian friends are ranting at me that I am heartless to be skeptical of Marina, a mother of two children facing serious jail time, but I'm dry-eyed -- Ukrainian mothers of two are being killed under Russian artillery fire -- along with their two children. Let's be crystal clear about who is suffering the most here. As someone who has spent my entire life helping Soviet and later Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Central Asian dissidents of all kinds to escape imprisonment, their countries, and their language limitations, I get to do that. All kinds of people are needed to make up successful anti-war movements in any country, including our own. Some people will be willing to pound Trident missiles or chain themselves to embassies and face jail time for "civil disobedience" (although I find the concept of what that involves less coherent in our time); others may only light a candle and put it their window. All levels of activism have to be accepted to succeed.

 

And you do have to be brave in Russia and take risks. Even so, I don't think fear of imprisonment or old age is an excuse for a prominent figure like historian and author Edvard Radzinsky to low-ball his response to the war; I don't see liberal science leader Evgeny Velikhov, said to be ailing, even with a poster saying "War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things" -- remember that witless wonder of the 1960s? -- although he was well enough to step out and receive his Order of Labour star from Putin recently. There is an awful lot of veniality and shocking distortion of universal principles and outright support of the war in Russia that seems needless even to keep one's job (100 rectors isn't all the rectors in Russia -- do we see a lot of names from the North Caucasus on this list, for example?)

 

It's sad that the emblematic "Kremlin establishment figure breaks with the establishment" is more riveting even than the Ukrainian grannies hurling canned tomatoes at the occupiers or farmers towing away disabled BTRs but that's how life works. It's even more riveting than highly visible Russian public personalities in the music and arts industry opposing the war in February -- nobody in the West knows these people, by and large. These people have -- had -- millions of fans and are now non-people.

 

Tens of thousands of Russians have been willing to sacrifice their freedom, even if only for a few days or weeks, or their jobs or their school placements to protest this war, with 1/100th the attention of Ovsyannikova, and that burns for a lot of us, for example, who saw the sainted Svetlana Gannushkina spend her 80th birthday in jail for an anti-war vigil , for example, who, despite being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with refugees within Russia's empire, is unlikely to own a suit like Ovsyannikova's or apply her make-up for the cameras quite as expertly Ovsyannikova after sleepless nights at the precinct.

 

The Propaganda Pickles in the Brave Club Sandwich

 

There are aspects of this story that don't hold up to scrutiny -- at least now -- although that doesn't mean it was scripted at the Kremlin as a 4D chess move and false-flag oppo to confuse those rooting for Ukraine and a few brave Russians by smuggling in the message of Ovsyannikov's pre-recorded message:  that "the Russian and Ukrainian people are one."

 

They aren't.

 

This thesis, rooted in her own personal origins both in Russia and Ukraine, is genuinely held by many post-Soviet people of mixed parentage and life experience but it really is not how to understand this war. It's not "fratricidal," as eloquent as the sign of one Russian personality -- "Cain, where is they brother Abel?" The war in Ukraine is an international war crime by a terror-state against a people struggling to break free of the Soviet past and integrate with Europe.

 

This poem made into a song will help you out with understanding this.

 

 

 

 

 

Russia is huge -- YUGE as Trump might say. But Ukraine is great -- as in valorous.

 

As great and powerful as it is, Russia clearly isn't winning this war -- at least not yet -- and that's important to grasp. 

 

I believe the way to understand the war in Ukraine is that it is not always Putin and Surkov and Zolotov puppeteering the events -- they can only fit so much puppeteering in a day's work, and Surkov seems to have been furloughed from his puppeteering duties. But all kinds of other actors may bid for their patronage or even manipulate those at the center of power in the Kremlin, whether a pro-Russian oligarch like Akhmetov who is denounced by Ukrainians in Kyiv but who back in 2014 put his coal miners on the streets in patrols in Mariupol to keep the Russian "little green men" out and his millions intact, or the unfortunate bejeweled woman mayor of Slavyansk with a Russian side hustle who went to jail, or Odessa trade union leaders who stockpiled food, medical supplies and weapons in the trade union building days before the soccer fan marches ended in clashes between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Moscow Russian speakers, culminating in a fire killing 46. Or even Ukrainian army officers with cross-river smuggling operations willing to kill their own. 

 

Many DNR and LNR leaders were assassinated but were home-grown and more possibly killed by local rivals, not Moscow-run saboteurs, like the mayor of Luhansk who came up through the KGB-run Soviet sports mafia. If the theory is that the GRU kills all their operatives who "know to much," you have to ask why the mainland Russian FSB collaborators like Col. Strelkov or Alexander Borodai (who got his career started at the White House siege in 1993) are now safely back in Moscow making the talk show circuit on creepy semi-Orthodox/semi-Slavic pagan YouTube channels. 

 

Various local and national pro-Kremlin factions made their attempts on Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Slavyansk in 2014-2015 and were beaten back, with Ukraine holding these cities all these years, but now I don't need to explain what has happened to them. The land bridge to Crimea is shaping up. Sometimes Moscow crushes resistance; sometimes not. Sometimes that resistance is real, but the people involved are no Andrei Sakharovs. 

 

Inside the sprawling Kremlin complexes of the presidential administration and the power ministries, not everything is hand-scripted by Putin, who reportedly does not use a cell phone or computer, as Oliver Stone once unwittingly revealed in one of his enthusiastic agit-prop movies.

 

One thing that was useful about the much-aligned Steele memo, which we covered in exhaustive detail in an 80,000 word piece cut for space that showed where statements were wrong or misleading, and where they might be right but unconfirmed, is that it confirms the saga of how the Kremlin first influenced the domestic parliamentary elections, then later the US and other foreign elections, by running it out of the Presidential Administration, not the GRU or FSB as such. The maestro of this effort, Volodin, was then moved to the position of speaker of the supine Russian parliament, along with other apparatchiks far less visible and known. Putin apparently didn't trust his own FSB to do the job and when it was finished, those in the know from the PA weren't defenestrated, but they were moved to influential, but less powerful positions. 

 

We saw how Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR or Foreign Intelligence Service, was humiliated on national TV when he began to stammer and bumble the script, speaking about how the DNR and LNR should be "incorporated into the Russian Federation," a remark that brought a nasty smile to Putin's lips, because the cover story was that these "republics" had "declared their independence" -- although many of its assets were already stripped, including entire factories whose equipment was hauled to Russia.  There are obsequious oligarchs and KGB yes-men around Putin and his lovely former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov, now head of the Rosgvardiya or National Guard (whose main mission is to crack the heads of any protesters), who recently received a "protective icon" from the utterly compromised Patriarch Kirill on Russian Orthodox TV, which is helpfully named Soyuz (Union) so you can understand its mission better in reconstructing the Russian World or Greater Russia that once made up the Soviet Union.

 

So as I noted I think it's likely there is an inside faction around the center of power that is angry and scared about the loss of their privileges and riches -- all tied to the perfidious West  -- and doesn't want to spend decades under war communism. 

 

This faction wants to show it is safe for elites to protest  -- this faction will work the courts to ensure light sentences like fines still payable on seemingly banned credit cards -- to ensure more protest, as mass protest is one way to end this war with Putin's demise.

 

But this faction is still careful to include in this message the thesis that "the Russian and Ukrainian people are one" to keep the shaky alliance of pro-Kremlin insiders and top influences of the masses on board. Some Russians are joking that Konstantin Ernst, CEO of Channel One is going to emerge and say in fact she was fired last week and has a visa application to France. Ernst was included in EU sanctions along with Roman Abramovich last week before the prime-time protest; maybe he's in on it; maybe he will be fired -- who knows? Who was the camera person for her pre-recorded video statement? Ksenia Sobchak was the first to post her pre-recorded video address on Telegram; how did Ovsyannikova get to her? These are questions asked by the English-language edition of NV (New Voice of Ukraine),  a business paper which I don't think of exactly a bastion of anti-Russian resistance, but ok.

 

They published a complete English translation of Ovsyannikova's pre-recorded speech, which is accurate, where those getting into the weeds could wonder why only Putin alone is singled out for blame, when an entire literal army and numerous supporting propagandists and enablers are responsible for this spectacularly evil war, and that budgets willing, an entire cast of characters should go to the Hague and be prosecuted for perpetrating it.

 

They can also wonder about Soviet catch-phrases like "fraternal peoples" which is a code phrase justifying the Anschluss of Crimea. Does Marina O., like Navalny and other Russian opposition leaders whose dissent ends at the border, favour keeping Crimea? Whatever Putin's lackeys turned possible coup-plotters want, it won't involve letting Crimea go.

 

Speaking of Navalny, who is lucky to be alive after the assassination attempt against him with nuclear warfare, who had a certain amount of clout in his day and garnered 30% of the Moscow mayoral elections and stayed out of jail for years on the varied trumped-up charges leveled against him, would not -- and now has not  been able --  to escape long-term internment once he's arrested on a minor charge like "failure to make parole appearances" if he also had this other job of organizing mass unrest or worse. 

 

In theory, Ovsyannikov could be facing 15 years under the new law, or at least a more serious charge punishable by several years for organizing a mass protest, although technically it was a solo picket which is allowed under the law in theory but not in practice (and a solo picket on national state TV may not fit their "time, place, and manner" legal criteria). Yet she was released from lock-up! 

 

NV concludes that Ovsyannikova's protest (not her acknowledged pre-recorded statement) was live, although armies of armchair generals on Twitter who look at Putin's watch on TV to see if it matches with the actual time -- or even week -- in Moscow -- think it's fake. The war-mongerers are busy, and unlikely have the time and budget to mount an operation as complex as an entirely fictive protest and arrest and post-jail comment.

 

Still, there's the odd fact that she is out of jail now. Will we find that she has later walked out of Russia to Finland, as some have actually done, or made her way to another "post-Soviet republic" or Turkey or Israel as others are managing to do? If she is authentic, one hopes so for the sake of herself and her children.

 

The good news, as a Ukrainian blogger explains, if we take the faulty story at face value, is that it proves sanctions work. Not everyone affected by them is going to be sterling of character as they are motivated only by a loss of their privileges.

 

The interesting thing about this episode is that sanctions work (that's why the poster is in English btw); not that there's suddenly a saint, or that Russians are somehow miraculously redeemed. Sanctions work, elites started to crack, and this is a good news.

— mostaleoht 🇺🇦 (@mostaleoht) March 15, 2022

That's fine, we'll accept that to stop the bloodshed.

The hopes for those boosting this story are that it will work to create more protest, as indicated by Barbashin whom one might characterize as separate but establishment-oriented commentator. I've suffered all kinds of intimidation from him for pointing out that he once worked for a state-sponsored think tank which apparently no longer exists or whose web site was removed, headed by a former KGB official. No, the issue is NOT that his father worked for the "organs," as has been repeatedly and erroneously reported about him, enabling him to discredit all credits. My approach to his former media outlet strangely made to look like Index on Censorship is not to look at his parentage and his ticket stubs to strange conferences but just look at what is published. The line emerges. It can be soft on the Kremlin or more often hard on the anti-Putin contingent -- like anti-anti-Communism, the anti-anti-Putin project always appears liberal and independent and may actually be free of "Moscow gold."

Oops, he has now deleted his tweet even as I was trying to screenshot it, and has now redacted it and we can't be sure where it will be in an hour, hence these paste-ups:

The theory of "bounce back" (and not "blow back") is one that launched Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, of course, and the hard part is always to measure audience reaction and engagement, as the buzz word has it now, a task which the radios have refined over the years.  Its placement of this story is indicative  -- in old newspaper  lay-out conception, it is not in the "right-lookers" upper right hand corner where you put the latest and most important war news, or anywhere on the "front page" upper half -- today, it's "below the fold," i.e. down on the lower part of the page with "trending visuals".  It is under the story of a Fox News reporter killed in Ukraine -- and as much as you'd like to harden your heart against Fox News, which some might find responsible for aspects of the war in Ukraine, it's still the more important story of a person killed covering Russian warfare against Ukrainians and not making espresso in her designer kitchen now.

Will It Spread?

This story and the thesis that go with it -- that the children of oligarchs are going rogue on Ukraine -- doesn't have any play yet and I'm skeptical about it as much as the claims around Ovsyannikova. The daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov; the daughter of Boris Yeltsin and wife of a Putin advisor Yumashev; Deripaska's daughter, another member of "The Family," have all made anti-war gestures. How far will this go or how long will it last? It's been more than two weeks and not much follow-up.

Russian protests are a story -- but they aren't the only story or indeed the main story when Ukrainians are fighting for their lives with incredible sacrifices against the Russian war monster.

Meduza, whose urbane American anti-anti-Putinist micro-blogger Kevin Rothrock has had a recent ostensible conversion, like Saul/Paul on the road to Kharkiv but who was only recently turning in snotty tweets like this one, has the more sophisticated take on all this, safely from Riga, where the former Lenta.ru editor and her loyal staff decamped years ago when she and some of them were dismissed over publishing a factual story about Yarosh.

As suspected, she was the protege of "powerful figures," but of the then-director of Kuban TV,  which probably no one outside of Kuban ever watches or has heard of, as the actually powerful RT chief propagandist Marina said in a put-down disavowing she was Ovsyannikova's classmate, but admitting they once competed for a job position. And as suspected, and as is typical for Russian state media and any position of any influence, she got her job through her husband, Igor, whose mother already worked at TV1. So, Soviet and post-Soviet lesser royalty.

Meduza can perform the ultimate put-down of anything that seems like a "conspiracy theory" by getting a source who used to work at the station but resigned after his own personal disgust at his part in covering the invasion of Georgia (fortuitous, that). He described the building layout, the procedures, the lack of guards in numbing detail -- because many asked the question of why goons didn't instantly appear even live on screen to put a bag over  her head and rush her to Lubyanka -- like they did with those computer programmers contracted to the FSB who may or may not have leaked information about Russia's manipulation of the US elections. There are no bag-holders. There's no guards at all. They are placed elsewhere at the entrance -- which is why she didn't even get out of the building of the TV tower at Ostankino. Understood.  

As Meduza explains, people work in state media as loyalists, as naive newbies who think it's a resume builder even abroad, as lifers now fearful of leaving or they can't support their families. There is a lot of unhappiness there, and some of it might take the form of a Ukraine-related protest. As someone who has seen every kind of story from protesters from true to false, perhaps people resigning, especially in a dramatic stunt, want to build up their asylum case for when they flee abroad.

It's curious that no one seems to have come up with an actual job description and list of job duties for Ovsyannikova, except this strange source of Meduza who describes a sort of "city desk" called "City Services" collecting "stories from cities all over the world". About...what? Garbage disposal or street cafes or what? It is only admitted that she had sources of news about Ukraine -- but then any more or less savvy Internet user can do that with even just Russian social media and a VPN, some of which still work.

Meduza leaves to the very end the story of Ivan Urgant, the famous Vecherny Urgant (Evening Urgant) who is a kind of Jimmy Fallon of Russian TV -- very famous and rich and popular. Overnight, because he expressed outrage over the war in Ukraine, he was pulverized to dust, his show cancelled, his name erased from history. A figure like that had far more reach and was far more brave, really, than Ovsyannikova because he lost everything. He won't be able to make a career abroad, except possibly on the Brighton Beach comedy club circuit in New York City.  His refusal to speak to Meduza may only be related to his need to get out of Russia first as he may not actually have the protection that Ovsyannikova has. Maxim Galkin, husband of famed singer Alla Pugacheva, is another such hugely popular figure who protested against the war on Instagram and was demolished over night, forced to leave for Turkey. Pugacheva is on "vacation" in Israel with their children. Every Russian knows them; now they are non-people because no one in the West did. No Russian ever heard of Ovsyannikova; now she is ensured safety and some kind of future because every Western media outlet embraced her.

The absolute best take on the Ovsyannikov was broadcast by Evgeniya Albats on YouTube, who interviewed Ovsyannikova at length and asked her many probing questions, as only someone immersed in Russian media realities can do, dredging up her Ukrainian past, her conflicts with the RT dragon lady and all the rest. You always have to ask with these stories: who were their parents? Were they Soviet nomenklatura? Dissident royalty? NKVD/KGB? Somebody helped Marina get a job in Ukraine (her father was Ukrainian), a job that she got in competition to Dragon Lady -- and yet continued to succeed, ending up in Moscow.

Wikipedia, oh that font of wisdom that has now utterly polluted chatGPT as I predicted, now says that Marina's actual job wasn't "the local news desk" but something much more suggesting a KGB education/training/background/involvement (in my view) because it dealt with sifting through Western news and pitching it to be useful to Russia -- a traditional disinformation/influence operation of "the organs", I could add. But maybe not. 

***

So fast forward to 2024, more than two years later, how did this story turn out? As Reuters reported (using that awful word "fugitive" sounding like the person is an actual criminal, rather than political refugee) -- Ovsyannikova got an 8.5-year sentence in 2023.

As Reuters and others reported at the time, this sentence was not for her first TV picked, for which she was only fined. Rather:

But she later faced criminal prosecution for "spreading knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces" in connection with a July 2022 protest when she stood on a river embankment opposite the Kremlin and held up a poster calling President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists.

But Marina had long before this fled with her daughter to an unknown location in Europe -- sometimes reported as Paris. And no, she was not poisoned as others have been.

Wikipedia recounts all her rather short-lived media jobs (it leaves out Italian TV for some reason), including Die Welt and her temporary departure from Russia (and leaving of her children to her now estranged husband), and her hounding out of Ukraine, where Ukrainians were really unimpressed with her "our two brotherly nations" stuff which she felt that "she herself embodied" no doubt in her parents. All of this is tiresome. The point is, while I'm personally skeptical that this isn't somebody's project, private or public, government or non-government, I'm also perfectly willing to say it's all true, and therefore you should be in despair, if you thought enabling picketers on state TV to get a soft landing at least on their first event will encourage others -- there haven't been any others and part of the problem is they are people like this.