Russian authorities detained a former state TV journalist who quit after staging an on-air protest against Moscow's war in Ukraine and charged her Wednesday with spreading false information about Russia's armed forces, according to her lawyer.
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Marina Ovsyannikova was charged over a separate street protest last month, when she held up a banner that said "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is a killer, his soldiers are fascists. 352 children have been killed (in Ukraine). How many more children should die for you to stop?"
If tried and convicted, Ovsyannikova faces up to 10 years in prison under a new law that penalizes statements against the military and that was enacted shortly after Russian troops moved into Ukraine, her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, said in a Telegram post.
Ovsyannikova's home was raided Wednesday and she was taken for questioning. Zakhvatov said the former producer for Russian state-funded Channel One would spend the night in a holding cell at Moscow police headquarters.
According to Net Freedoms, a legal aid group focusing on free speech cases, as of Wednesday there were 79 criminal cases on charges of spreading false information about the military and up to 4,000 administrative cases on charges of disparaging the armed forces.
