The Mysterious Case of Marina O.

For a number of moments, Ovsyannikova’s protest was beamed into houses round Moscow and central Russia. Then, the digicam lower away. Ovsyannikova was detained, taken to a big police station throughout the state tv studio complicated often called Ostankino, earlier than being moved half a mile to the key police division inside Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of Nationwide Financial system, a big park with exhibition halls identified by its acronym VDNKh, the place she was held for the subsequent 14 hours.

It was after what appeared like countless questioning, within the wee hours of the morning, that her interrogator stated: “Let’s drink a cup of tea. Let’s eat some blini. Everybody’s hungry,” Ovsyannikova recounted.

As any foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin would have warned Ovsyannikova, have been they nonetheless alive to take action: When a Russian safety officer provides you an Earl Gray and a snack, don’t say sure. However Ovsyannikova was new to the dissident sport and unprepared for what lay forward of her.

She drank the tea.

Saved by Macron

Most guests to the VDNKh complicated, positioned half a mile from the Ostankino tv and radio tower, are greeted by an iconic 78-foot-high statue of the “Employee and Kolkhoz Lady” and different Soviet-era relics.

However Ovsyannikova obtained to admire VDNKh’s true Stalinist legacy, buried deep inside its partitions.

“All of the journalists have been searching for me, all of the legal professionals. They have been searching for me in Ostankino, the place there’s a big police division. However the truth that there’s a police division on the exhibition heart — no journalists knew about that. It’s a secret division, a small police station, and that’s the place they took me.”

“It wasn’t the dungeons of Lubyanka,” she stated, referring to the scary headquarters of the Federal Safety Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB. “There weren’t any handcuffs, they didn’t torture me.”

Nonetheless, her interrogators weren’t messing round.

“They didn’t depart me alone for a second. If somebody needed to depart the room, a special particular person got here in and was with me the entire time. I didn’t know, I’ve by no means been interrogated, so I requested, ‘Why are you following me even to the bathroom?’”

Ovsyannikova was primarily interrogated by two males, she instructed me in our dialog — one taking the lead, the opposite serving to out. Each have been of their mid-30s, neither significantly imposing, and he or she had the sensation they have been lackeys finishing up another person’s bidding.

“This was not some sort of skillful interrogator from Lubyanka who’s tremendous clever, who’s immersed within the political world,” she stated. The principle inquisitor was “such an bizarre common Joe.”

As the lads questioned her, their telephones saved ringing. Ovsyannikov might hear them discuss with their higher-ups, who instructed them how the world was responding to Ovsyannikova’s protest and subsequent disappearance as they debated what sort of prices to carry in opposition to her.

“The scenario was consistently altering. … The interrogator was saying, ‘Oh, will this be administrative prices? No, it’s felony, we’ll put you in jail,’” Ovsyannikova stated. “They have been waiting for my response, and for the reactions from the worldwide neighborhood.”

The primary massive second got here when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ovsyannikova for her protest in his nightly tackle simply after 2 a.m. — saying he was grateful “particularly to the woman who entered the studio of Channel One with a poster in opposition to the struggle.”

However the actual breakthrough got here later that morning, when French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concern over Ovsyannikova’s whereabouts, telling reporters: “We’re clearly taking steps aimed toward providing your colleague our safety on the embassy or an asylum safety.”

As quickly as Macron made these feedback, the interrogator’s cellphone rang with directions to impose administrative prices, carrying a most sentence of solely 10 days, moderately than felony ones, which might have seen her imprisoned for as much as 15 years.

“I might hear a part of the dialog,” Ovsyannikova instructed me. “I understood they have been getting calls from greater administration, they usually got some further questions. Clearly, they have been instructed what to ask me. After which the investigator was joking, ‘Oh, now Macron is looking you, one thing goes to vary.’”

“It’s potential that Macron together with his very quick response and supply of political asylum — it’s potential that saved me from felony prices,” she stated.

However escaping felony prices turned out to be a special sort of punishment.

Dissident or Stooge?

To many Russians and Russia-watchers, all of it appears so unlikely.

The incongruities within the story of Marina O. are mind-boggling: A veteran propagandist straight out of central casting all of the sudden grows a conscience and blows up her comfy life by talking out in opposition to a regime she spent twenty years propping up. The very fact she was capable of burst onto the set of Vremya, Russia’s showcase night information program, and made it to air with out being dragged off by guards or dumped by a censor. The choice by authorities to offer her solely an administrative punishment regarding an anti-war video she posted on social media, moderately than pursue felony prices for the TV protest itself. Her lenient effective of 30,000 rubles (at the moment, round $280), moderately than the threatened 15-year jail sentence. The very fact she was subsequently freed and free to talk with Western media.

After which, a month later, she had a brand new job as a contributing author at Germany’s Die Welt newspaper (which is owned by POLITICO’s father or mother firm, Axel Springer); Die Welt editors provided me an interview along with her on the situation that I not disclose her whereabouts, sure info about her household scenario or her plans for the long run. I’m allowed to say that after we spoke, she was not in Russia.

What I needed to learn about her was the identical query everybody who’d seen her protest appeared to be asking: Is Ovsyannikova a dissident — or a Kremlin stooge?

After Die Welt introduced it had employed Ovsyannikova, a Ukrainian youth group referred to as Vitsche Berlin protested exterior the newspaper’s workplace. In a press release, the activists stated they have been against Ovsyannikova’s appointment as a result of, “It’s inconceivable to verify whether or not Marina Ovsyannikova has stopped cooperating with Russia.”

“She paid a paltry $250 effective as punishment and was capable of depart Russian territory unhindered. The Russian regime has already convicted a number of individuals of as much as 10 years in jail for related anti-war actions.”

“There isn’t any such factor as ex-propaganda and no such factor as ex-propagandists,” the assertion stated. (Vitsche Berlin didn’t reply to a request for an interview.)

Ovsyannikova instructed me she understands the skeptics and needs to set the document straight.

On the query of why she acquired such a light-weight punishment, Ovsyannikova stated it was a “genius” transfer by the Kremlin that concurrently took her out of the headlines and undermined her credibility.

“I’m able to do a polygraph, to reply any query,” she instructed me. “The Kremlin is fairly sensible. They’ve thought it via, they usually have an excellent technique: They’re making an attempt in each potential solution to devalue my motion, to humiliate me, to denigrate me, to cowl me with grime.”

“In Russia, they name me a British spy or a traitor,” Ovsyannikova continued. “To get Ukrainians to doubt me, they throw into the combo that I’m an agent of the FSB. … So I’m hated on one aspect and on the opposite — and for the Kremlin, that’s very helpful. I believe they’re in all probability rubbing their fingers in glee proper now, fascinated about how nice a job they’ve achieved resolving this drawback.”

After all, one of many results of propaganda and cynical false flag operations, which Russia frequently conducts and accuses others of conducting, is that it turns into very troublesome to imagine something is real. The purpose of Putin’s propaganda machine — which Ovsyannikova herself helped construct — is the anomaly and the concern. And the result’s she will be able to get on the air waving an anti-war placard, and there can be many individuals who imagine she had sinister motives, was a pawn in somebody’s sport, on somebody’s payroll, or a part of a Kremlin operation to exhibit leniency to anti-war protesters at a time when hundreds had been jailed for a lot much less seen anti-war statements.

Given the questions swirling about Ovsyannikova’s bona fides, why did Die Welt resolve to offer her a job?

“She’s a logo of a Russian dwelling in cognitive dissonance — realizing the Western world however dwelling in a system which has to break down with a view to create the liberty to stay within the Western system,” says Ulf Poschardt, Die Welt’s editor-in-chief. “So I believe we needs to be open to individuals who resolve to not be part of the system any extra.”

Many Russian journalists who’ve risked their lives to report about corruption and different Kremlin misdeeds, in some instances for many years, bristle on the consideration given to Ovsyannikova. They don’t see why she needs to be praised for one act of protest after they’ve been laboring for many years at risk and obscurity — and now, in lots of instances, in exile.

Die Welt editors argue that if Russia goes to have any probability at evolving in a democratic path, it should require many Marinas nonetheless working inside its energy buildings to make an identical psychological and political break.

“And you recognize the German historical past and the historical past within the twentieth century additionally. We now have colleagues who spent their lives being journalists within the GDR [Communist East Germany] and who grew to become superb journalists right here,” Poschardt added.

Contained in the Data Struggle

For anybody confounded by Ovsyannikova’s sudden conversion from Kremlin propagandist to truth-teller, it’s essential to grasp what she did at Channel One.

Since 2003, Ovsyannikova’s job was to observe Western information streams and press conferences, searching for tidbits that made the West look dangerous and Russia look good. As such, she was one of many few individuals in Russia with unfettered entry to Reuters, the BBC, the Related Press, The New York Occasions and POLITICO.

“On this seek for info, the evaluation of it, I used to be wanting on the photos, watching all of the press conferences, you recognize, the [U.S.] State Division, the European Fee, all our officers, the U.N. Safety Council,” she instructed me.

Over time, Ovsyannikova stated, the hole between what these Western sources have been reporting, and what Russian media like her personal Channel One instructed their audiences, saved rising. It nagged at her. Earlier in her life, she voted for Putin. She grew to become a journalist throughout what she referred to as the “golden age” of Russian journalism, impressed by Zhanna Agalakova (who would later grow to be Ovsyannikova’s Channel One colleague earlier than additionally quitting the station herself over its stance on Putin’s struggle on Ukraine), Svetlana Sorokina (who now hosts a weekly discuss present on under-attack impartial channel TV Rain), and Alexander Nevzorov (who’s going through a felony case for reporting on Russia’s shelling of the Mariupol maternity hospital in Ukraine). However now her values have been clashing an increasing number of straight with what she was doing at work.

“I labored on the overseas desk, I noticed the response of the opposite aspect, I noticed what individuals stated. I learn the studies, for example about [the downing of MH17]. I noticed how our authorities is mendacity, and this grew to become a logo of the Kremlin — lies and fixed cynicism. It was apparent. I used to be brewing on this surroundings, on this political, worldwide surroundings, I used to be watching all of this. And for me, this revulsion grew through the years. And over the past years, it had grown a lot that I grew to become sick over it.”

The start of the top for her, Ovsyannikova says, was not the assassinations of Kremlin critics, the shuttering of impartial media, or the elimination of direct gubernatorial elections. It was Putin’s transfer, in December 2012, to ban Individuals from adopting Russian youngsters — a call introduced in retaliation in opposition to U.S. sanctions — which prevented hundreds of orphans from escaping dire situations in Russian orphanages and discovering loving households.

“We spoke about it with such cynicism on Channel Every one different authorities channels,” stated Ovsyannikova, who was by then a mom of two younger youngsters herself. “We have been so merciless. … These poor youngsters who have been already en path to the U.S. and obtained caught.”

She acknowledges her position in supporting Putin’s propaganda machine: “Now I’ve gotten to the purpose the place I perceive, with horror, the injustices which have occurred in our nation, the way it all grew, and why we saved working for state channels and continued mendacity.”

Then, on February 24 this yr, Putin declared struggle on Ukraine. Ovsyannikova — who’s half Ukrainian and was born within the southern Ukrainian port metropolis of Odesa however spent a lot of her childhood in Grozny, the capital of the breakaway Russian area of Chechnya — says one thing broke inside her. Chechnya was the goal of two Russian wars, they usually turned her into an inside refugee.

“From the age of seven to round 13 years previous I lived in Grozny. When the struggle was beginning in Grozny, we heard gunshots, explosions exterior our home windows.” She says her mom, who was elevating Ovsyannikova on her personal after the demise of her father when she was 5 months previous, was pressured to go away every little thing behind to flee to security.

Putin’s declaration of struggle on Ukraine “was a double set off for me,” she stated. “It’s not solely that my roots are Ukrainian, my father was Ukrainian, however along with this in my childhood I had lived via what Ukrainian refugees live via.”

At Channel One, as with the opposite Russian state-run TV channels (together with RT, the place based on Meduza, Ovsyannikova’s ex-husband now heads up the Spanish service), editorial path got here straight from the highest.

“All of the directions descended from the Kremlin,” Ovsyannikova instructed me. “The decision comes from the Kremlin to the highest man, Kirill Kleimyonov, the director of the [Channel One] information service. … Then there are these every day morning, afternoon and night briefings, at which they talk about what we’re going to point out and in what means we’re going to current it.”

After February 24, these directions included directives to not name Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a struggle. “As quickly because the struggle began we stopped displaying any footage from worldwide information businesses, we solely took footage from the protection ministry or from our correspondents on the entrance strains from Donetsk and Luhansk — no different clips. We didn’t present the extent of the humanitarian disaster, the refugees in Poland. Although I might see it on my display screen, we clearly didn’t present it.”

Ovsyannikova’s first intuition was to go to the streets to protest. However as she’s instructed a number of information organizations, her teenage son stopped her, hiding her automotive keys.

“The thought of the protest in the course of the stay broadcast was pretty spontaneous,” she instructed me, and got here collectively the day earlier than she went via with it. She made the poster and necklace and recorded a brief video on Sunday, March 13. “It was such a powerful emotional impulse that I knew it needed to be achieved on Monday, as a result of if I didn’t do it on Monday, then on Tuesday I might simply resign.”

She smuggled her poster into the TV studio rolled up within the sleeve of her jacket. When she obtained into work for her shift at 2 p.m., Ovsyannikova stated she used her safety go to enter the newsroom, then sat searching for a chance.

Vremya’s host, Yekaterina Andreyeva, was separated from the remainder of the newsroom by glass and guarded by safety. However, Ovsyannikova says, the guard was “buried in her cellphone, so I noticed that was my probability.”

She added: “I used to be 90 % positive that it wouldn’t work. I honestly simply didn’t suppose that it could occur so powerfully and strongly. So I didn’t actually suppose via the implications. A variety of my associates now are blaming me for not deleting their numbers [from my phone] as a result of they’re having issues, they’re getting calls.”

A lot of Ovsyannikova’s detractors have expressed doubts that Russian information is actually broadcast stay. Don’t they’ve a delay of at the least a number of seconds or minutes like many Western channels do? Ovsyannikova insists that there have been so many various information broadcasts at Channel One at completely different instances of day throughout the nation’s 11 time zones {that a} delay was simply impractical. Since her protest, nonetheless — the primary time something of the kind has occurred in Vremya’s 54-year historical past — Channel One has now carried out a one-minute delay. (Quite a few former colleagues and fact-checking consultants have backed up Ovsyannikova’s account.)

“On each channel, all of the information was transmitted stay, proper up till my protest,” she stated. “Now on Channel One, there’s a one-minute delay, from what I do know.”

She added: “Individuals ask me why a few of my signal was in English. It was actually supposed for a overseas viewers, to point out that not all Russians are idiots. … There are various people who find themselves in opposition to the struggle.”

Mom Russia

In our dialog, Ovsyannikova volunteered one thing that she’s additionally instructed different information organizations, that she has no plans to to migrate to the West.

“Life has modified very a lot, after all. However I’m not inclined to to migrate. … There’s no felony investigation into me proper now, so I’m a free particular person, I’m a citizen of Russia.”

I requested whether or not Ovsyannikova is worried in regards to the hazard she might face by returning to Moscow. In any case, she hasn’t been prosecuted but for her precise protest, and Russian authorities might resolve to try this at any second.

“They’re watching me, they’re watching each step I take,” she acknowledged. “At any second they might carry a felony case in opposition to me. My legal professionals say, ‘You’re stress-free too quickly, they might jail anybody at any second.’”

I can’t assist however do not forget that some journalists and Kremlin critics have confronted fates worse than jail. I ask Ovsyannikova if she remembers Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who survived poison administered by way of a cup of tea earlier than being shot useless in October 2006 within the elevator of her Moscow house constructing. Because it occurs, I interviewed Politkovskaya simply 5 months earlier than she was killed, when she instructed me, “In Russia, you’ll be able to grow to be too well-known for assassination.” She’d been mistaken. Ovsyannikova clearly believes fame can be a security web for her, nonetheless.

“I’m not afraid for one easy motive,” Ovsyannikova instructed me. “A choice was made to hush up this case as shortly as potential, so individuals neglect as quickly as potential and nobody talks to me. … Why am I doing these interviews? I’m doing these interviews so I’ve safety of some sort.”

Towards the top of our interview, I requested Ovsyannikova whether or not she regrets her protest.

“I wouldn’t change something,” she insisted. “Perhaps I woke Russians up slightly bit, made them suppose slightly bit about what they’re instructed on TV.”

“I believe in lots of [Russians] it raised doubts,” she continued. “As a result of it’s one factor if you happen to’re sitting in your kitchen and discussing with your loved ones how the Kremlin is terrible as a result of they began this horrible struggle, and you are feeling alone and afraid. However once you see you’re not alone, when somebody like me exhibits you there are individuals on TV, within the coronary heart of the data wars, who suppose the identical means … that’s psychologically highly effective.”