Marina Ovsyannikova, who fired from Channel One after an anti -war action, went to Ukraine

This caused a wave of indignation, the journalist "miraculously left" from the country

Marina Ovsyannikova, a former Channel One Employee, who fired after the anti -war action on the air, visited Ukraine. She arrived there as a freelance correspondent for the German edition of Welt, where she got a job after leaving Russian television. The report on the invitation of Ovsyannikova in Welt said that she will work, including from Ukraine and Russia.

In open sources, Medusa did not find information about when exactly Ovsyannikova came to Ukraine. However, on May 31, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported that on June 1, its press center will host a journalist’s press conference entitled “Expanding from Marina Ovsyannikova: how Russian propaganda works.” It was expected to be the personal presence of the former Channel One employee, who received the European Prize named after Vaclav Gavel for his protest against the war.

The announcement of the press conference caused indignation. Natalya Ligacheva, the chief editor of the Detector Media project, which analyzes the Ukrainian media sphere,said that the appearance of Ovsyannikova in Kiev is “inappropriate now and unreasonable for Ukrainian citizens and journalists” and called not to cover her press conference in the media. Under the news "Interfax-Ukraine" in social networks they began to leave negative comments, the NV publication wrote .

As a result, Interfax-Ukraine canceled the press conference of Ovsyannikova. The head of the agency, Alexander Martynenko, told NV that he did not know exactly who was the initiator of the event; According to him, Ovsyannikova called herself. They decided to abandon the press conference because of the “negative resonance”, Martynenko explained: “[I] expected that [resonance] would be, but believed that if our journalists came and tell her in person what they think about her would be good, in particular, for her. Well, as I understand it, it is advisable not to see her here at all. This is the common position of the entire journalistic community. ”

From June 3 to 5, Ovsyannikova published several posts on Facebook about her trip to Ukraine. On June 3, she talked about a visit to Odessa, calling the city “relatives” and noting that “almost half” of its inhabitants left, and the remaining “live in constant fear”. On June 4, Ovsyannikova spoke about the aircraft warning application in Ukrainian cities. On June 5, she showed the queue for gasoline in Kiev, adding that the inhabitants of Moscow "it is difficult to understand what difficulties in ordinary everyday life have to overcome Ukrainians."

“The commandant hour was very struck. Smart morning silence, empty streets and howling siren. Still, it is not possible to get rid of the sensation of how the war is possible in the 21st century? I want to cry from powerlessness ... Why can't we stop all this madness? " - wrote the journalist.

Each of these posts collected hundreds of comments. In some Ovsyannikov, they thanked and supported. However, the majority were negative. Basically, their authors reminded that Ovsyannikova worked on Channel One for many years , accused her of spreading propaganda, wrote that she had no place in Ukraine, and advised to go "after the Russian ship." Part of the comments contained obscene vocabulary.

Ovsyannikova answered individual commentators. A resident of Odessa, who condemned her arrival in the city, she wrote : “Russians need to know what is actually happening in Ukraine. Why can I not come to the country where I was born, where my two cousins ​​live and my father’s grave live. Personally, I did nothing bad to Ukraine, on the contrary, I protect it. ” In other cases, Ovsyannikova explained that on Channel One, she worked in the international edition, did not write and did not release “propaganda texts”.

Some of the authors of the comments noted the Security Service of Ukraine in them; They asked why Ovsyannikov let them into the country, and asked to “remove it from our city”, the publication of “fact” paid attention .

The journalist of the publication "Slidism.Info" Dmitry Ripanchuk said that the arrival of Ovsyannikova is "a planned information and psychological special operation, which the Russian special services are very successful in the heart of Ukraine." “The goal is very simple: on the one hand, to provoke Ukrainians to justified aggression, which will be a consequence of an attack on (formally) German journalist. On the other hand, the promotion right in Ukraine is a propaganda narrative that this is Putin’s war, and ordinary Russians are not to blame, ”Ripanchuk wrote.

The Center for Combating Disinformation (CPD) under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine called Ovsyannikov the “agent of influence” of the Kremlin. “Having received the image of a dissident that is profitable for the West, she began to work out the“ set task ”on the advancement of the western audience of the narrative about the need to relieve sanctions with the Russian Federation,” the CPD said, adding that Ovsyannikova also “quite successfully promotes the thesis about the inadmissibility of Russophobia and the absence of the collective responsibility of Russians for the actions of the country's President Vladimir Putin.

Ovsyannikova herself told Medusa that she went to Ukraine with a “good idea” - “to help the authorities, write down an interview with Zelensky, show Buch and Kharkov.” The journalist, she said, stayed in the country for five days - from May 27 to May 31. At first she went to Odessa, "they recorded an interview with people, everything was fine." And after arriving in Kyiv and the announcement of the press conference, as Ovsyannikov put it, "began." “Journalists began to shout that I was Moskalka, an FSB agent, a propagandist, that there are no former propagandists, that I should be arrested,” she described reproaches in her address.

“As a result, the Welt service evacuated [me] in the most incredible ways. I even refused to meet with fear [with an adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko, who proposed interviewing instead of a press conference], he immediately introduced me to the Peacemaker base , and I fled. It was some kind of horror, we hardly drove in a car through Romania, I miraculously left, ”the journalist said. At the same time, she noted that she could understand the feelings of Ukrainians and agree with the point of view that the inhabitants of Russia are collective responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine.

On June 6, Ovsyannikova published on Facebook two posts devoted to criticism, which she hears both the Russian and Ukrainian side. The journalist wondered “which prison should I sit in: in Russian or Ukrainian?”, And also posted screenshots with calls to prohibit her from entering Ukraine (from the Ukrainian Minister of Culture) and deprive her of Russian citizenship (from the Spiker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation). “My personal results of the struggle with a meaningless war,” Ovsyannikova wrote.