Marina had worked at Channel One for most of her life. She joined the channel as an intern in 2003 and soon became an editor of the international news section. Marina came into the spotlight due to her public protest actions. On March 14, 2022, during a live broadcast of the evening news program, she appeared carrying a poster: “No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. You are being lied to here. Russians against war.” After that Ms. Ovsyannikova was fined 30,000 rubles (albeit for a different offence).

The ex-editor continued to speak up against the “special operation”. She was fined twice, under the article on “discrediting the Russian Army”, for expressing support for Ilya Yashin and for publishing an anti-war post on social media. Then on July 15, 2022, Marina came out to the Sofiyskaya Embankment in Moscow carrying a poster, which read: “Putin is a murderer. His soldiers are fascists” along with information about children killed in Ukraine. This action was qualified by the investigators as “public dissemination of false information about the Russian Army”.

Early in the morning on August 10, 2022, the police as well as some Investigative Committee officials arrived in Marina’s house. The woman was taken in for questioning and charged under article 207.3, part 2. The next day the court placed Ms. Ovsyannikova under house arrest. The fact that she had an 11-year-old daughter, who was scared by the search and pressuring of her mother, was considered a mitigating circumstance.

Marina currently is under house arrest. In the spring, she temporarily left Russia to work for the German news channel Welt. However, after three months she had to come back to litigate with her ex-husband. She essentially became a hostage of the state, for which she had worked for almost 20 years.