War in Ukraine: Russian journalist Marina Ovsiannikova refuses asylum offered by Macron – 20 Minutes

Marina Ovsiannikova “does not want to leave” Russia. The Russian journalist, who became a muse against the war after appearing on a pro-Kremlin television newscast to denounce the offensive in Ukraine, refused Emmanuel Macron’s offer of asylum. “I am a patriot, my son is. even more. We don’t want to leave under any circumstances, we don’t want to go anywhere, ”she said in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel broadcast on Wednesday evening. The French president said he was ready on Tuesday to offer him “consular protection”, either at the embassy or by granting him asylum. This 43-year-old woman distinguished herself by bursting into live Monday evening during the Russia’s most-watched newscast, on the Pervy Kanal channel, where she is a producer, with a sign criticizing the military operation in Ukraine and denouncing the “propaganda” of the government-controlled media. The risk of a heavy sentence from prisonAfter being arrested, she was immediately sentenced to a simple fine and released. However, she still risks criminal prosecution punishable by heavy prison terms, under the terms of a recent law repressing any “false information” about the Russian army. “It’s a war against a brotherly people! No sane person can accept it,” says the young woman born in Odessa, Ukraine, to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother. She believes that her coup “was above all a pacifist action: it is in the interest of Russia and the world to put an end to this war as quickly as possible”. “I also wanted to show that the Russians are against this war too, which a lot of people in the West don’t understand. The majority of intelligent and educated people here oppose this war,” she said. Finally, she indicates that she prepared her action alone, without having first spoken to her family or friends.