Russian reporter who protested Ukraine war says she’s escaped house arrest

A Russian television journalist who was charged with a crime after she protested the country’s invasion of Ukraine live on the air says she has escaped house arrest.

Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at popular state-run Russian broadcaster Channel One, wrote on Telegram “I consider myself completely innocent” and that she has refused to comply with her house arrest order as of Sept. 30, Bloomberg reported.

Ovsyannikova quit the Russian broadcaster after making an on-air protest against Moscow’s war in Ukraine in March, holding a sign that read: “Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”

“The war was the point of no return,” she said in an American television interview after the episode. “I realized that I either would need to do something or we would reach a point of no return and it would be more and more difficult to do anything.”

In August, a Russian court ordered Ovsyannikova to be placed under house arrest for nearly two months pending an investigation and potential trial on charges she had spread false information about Russia’s armed forces.

Ovsyannikova was earlier this week placed on Russia’s wanted list after her husband said over the weekend that she’d fled her Moscow house arrest, Bloomberg reported.

“I wanted to show to the world that Russians are against the war, the majority of Russians,” she said in the interview earlier this year. “Our life changed overnight. Russians are really scared by what’s going on.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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