You may remember Marina Ovsyannikova as the infamous Russian propagandist who ran out onto a supposedly live broadcast of Channel One, one of the main Russian propaganda channels in the country, with a “No War” poster. This was followed by an upload of a pre-recorded statement where Ovsyannikova elaborates on her anti-war protest.
The video of her demonstration quickly flew around the internet, with many lauding her actions as brave, selfless, and inspirational. Western audiences especially were not receptive to Ukrainians pointing out that her video was filled with Russian imperialist narratives and that her so-called protest and subsequent actions are extremely harmful to the Ukrainian community and simply an extension of the Russian propaganda machine.
Ovsyannikova’s History
Ovsyannikova was not some sort of small, unknown journalist who happened to seize the chance to steal a couple seconds of air time. She had been employed at Channel One since the early 2000s, all the while “spreading Kremlin propaganda,” in her own words. For years, Ovsyannikova scoured the internet for any story, any tidbit of information that could be used to make the US, the West, and of course Ukraine, look bad, while simultaneously inflating any articles praising Putin and Russia. By doing so, she actively stoked anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian sentiment for decades, convincing the Russian people of their own so-called superiority. This propaganda only intensified after Russia first invaded the east of Ukraine in 2014. After all of this, for her to switch to denouncing the war overnight is suspicious, to say the least.
I’m not even going to start on her attempts to now identify as Ukrainian, simply because she claims to have been born in Odesa. Even if true, all this would make her is a traitor who stoked the genocide against their own country. But I digress…
The Protest
Let’s discuss her “protest” itself, which consisted of three main elements: the poster, the video uploaded afterwards, and her necklace.
- The Poster: To start, the poster was written in a mix of Russian and English, an interesting choice considering that the level of English literacy in Russia is quite low. When speaking with the BBC, Ovsyannikova explained her choice by saying that “[she] really wanted to show the Western audience that some Russians are against war.” And there it is. This poster was never truly meant to change the opinion or “open the eyes” of anyone inside Russia. It was tailored towards Western audiences and meant to evoke unearned sympathy for a population that is largely either supportive of Russia’s war on Ukraine or indifferent. In short, it was just meant to paint an image to the West. All of this is without even considering the sheer improbability of her being able to “smuggle in” a poster of that size without anyone asking what it was and discovering her “secret.”
- The Video: But it is her pre-recorded video message that demonstrated that her propaganda work never actually stopped — it simply took on another form. In the video, Ovsyannikova refers to the war as “fratricidal” multiple times, which directly ties into the Russian imperialist narrative that there is no distinction between Ukrainians and Russians. Furthermore, in the same breath as saying how ashamed she was of spreading Kremlin propaganda to stoke anti-Ukrainian attitudes, she insists that the responsibility for the war lies only with Putin and not the whole nation. This is, of course, false. It is not Putin committing war crimes every day in Ukraine, not Putin writing for propaganda newspapers and TV channels, and not Putin who gleefully displays the “Z” symbol on the streets and harasses Ukrainian refugees abroad. Putin, as one man, could not have this much power and influence if for decades, Russian citizens did not tolerate his re-election time and time again. And yes, they did tolerate it — since the fall of the Soviet Union, the largest protest in Russia had, as a generous estimate, less than 200 thousand participants nationwide, which is only about 0.14% of the total Russian population of 146 million. The amount of dissent is essentially insignificant. As for those Russians who “do not take a side” or do not see the point of protesting, their silence has the same effect as outright support, and so the war continues. This cultivated culture of passivity is directly responsible for the loss of Ukrainian lives.
- The Necklace: Ovsyannikova appears wearing a necklace where one half is in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, and the other half is in the colors of the Russian flag. She states that this necklace symbolizes “that Russia must stop this war and that our brotherly nations must reconcile.” Once again, the claim that Ukrainians and Russians are “brotherly” anything is a colonial narrative which denies that Ukraine has a separate and distinct culture from Russia.
Punishment, or Lack Thereof
Finally, we come to her “punishment” for her demonstration. In the months since February 2022, we have regularly seen Russian citizens getting beaten and arrested for completely ridiculous things such as holding up blank pieces of paper, wearing blue shoes with yellow stripes on them, and just reading War and Peace in public (ironic, since this is widely considered to be one of the great Russian classics). In short, any display of anything that was even remotely related to the war was severely punished. Meanwhile, Ovsyannikova with her nationally broadcasted protest got away with only some questioning and a fine equivalent to $280. The consequences simply do not scale accordingly.
In fact, she was even able to leave the country afterwards! But even her journey out of Russia wasn’t without inconsistencies. In the aftermath of her demonstration, the French government offered Ovsyannikova asylum, an offer that she refused on the grounds of being more effective at trying to open her fellow Russians’ eyes by staying in the country. Despite all these grand ideals, less than a month later she had accepted a freelance correspondent position at the German newspaper Die Welt and left for Berlin.
A New Platform for Ovsyannikova’s Propaganda
Die Welt is a conservative publication that has had its fair share of controversy in the past — you may remember it as the newspaper that published cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, eliciting massive worldwide outrage. The paper was even banned in Egypt in 2008 as a result. Unfortunately in the years since Die Welt’s journalistic standards have hardly improved and today it promotes Russian imperialism, choosing to cover the war through the voice of Ovsyannikova, a propagandist from the aggressor state.
On April 14th, 2022, the Ukrainian community protested against Ovsyannikova’s hiring in front of Die Welt’s offices. On April 22nd, Die Welt invited representatives from Vitsche, a Berlin-based Ukrainian NGO, for an interview. Vitsche recounts that during the 3 hour long interview, they thoroughly explained their opposition to Ovsyannikova’s appointment and Die Welt promised to publish the Ukrainian point of view the following week. However, the interview was never published.
Instead, the publication began dodging Vitsche’s inquiries, ignoring their messages and calls and thus completely refusing to give the Ukrainian community an equal voice. Two weeks later, in an interview to the Russian media platform Holod, Ovsyannikova blatantly lied about the Ukrainian protests to her hiring, stating that:
“They were young Ukrainians, they didn’t understand anything and came to my bosses… Die Welt’s leadership talked to them, explained everything, they dispersed and don’t hold anything against me anymore. They talked well enough, the Ukrainians understood everything.”
There are several layers to this insult. Despite Ukrainians of all ages attending the protest, Ovsyannikova characterized all of them as “young” and thus positioning herself and Die Welt as an “older and therefore wiser” party. She continues to belittle the Ukrainian community, stating that “they didn’t understand anything” by themselves and had to be led to the “proper” conclusions by a helping hand…sound familiar? Finally, she finishes off by another jab at Ukrainians’ intelligence, remarking that they “talked well enough,” insinuating her surprise that Ukrainians could hold coherent conversations and even “understood everything.” These statements are representative of another facet of Russian imperialism — by constantly degrading the intelligence of other peoples, Russia has built up a cult of superiority where anyone who is not Russian is seen as lesser and in need of guidance. Naturally, the one to provide this “guidance” is Russia itself. Through her harmful misrepresentation of Ukrainians, Ovsyannikova spreads the propagandist narrative that Ukrainians are less intelligent than Russians and incapable of making decisions for themselves, so therefore they would be “better off” under Russian rule.
Visit to Kyiv
As one of her assignments at Die Welt, Ovsyannikova went to Kyiv intending to hold a press conference about how Russian propaganda works and even wanted to organize a lecture on journalistic standards at the Shevchenko Institute. Neither of these events took place. Ukrainians do not need anyone to explain how Russian propaganda works to them — they have extensive knowledge of it dating all the way back to the Soviet Union, and for the past eight years they have been actively dying because of this propaganda during Russia’s genocidal war on Ukraine. To have someone who actively created and spread this propaganda now turn around and lecture Ukrainians on how she did so is a slap in the face. Furthermore, the irony of Ovsyannikova talking about journalistic standards, as if she did not spend her entire career sifting through international news and picking out pieces that supported the Kremlin’s propaganda, is unmatched.
Shifting and Escaping Responsibility
Naturally, after being denied a platform in Kyiv, Ovsyannikova took to social media to claim that any protests against her actually benefit the Kremlin and instead Ukrainians should be welcoming her. She has even directly insulted Ukrainian activists by calling them “Moscow trolls that work for Russian secret services.” In her view, Russians don’t protest against the war because they are afraid of Ukrainians criticizing them for their previous inaction. By framing it this way, Ovsyannikova places the blame for the lack of any sort of Russian protests or opposition to the war not on the Russians themselves, but on Ukrainians.
This leads to the next layer: Ovsyannikova insists that she should be above criticism, that she should receive a “clean slate” despite her work as a propagandist, and that anyone who tries to correct her as she speaks about Ukrainians is contributing to their own genocide. In short, this rhetoric is a convoluted way to circumvent consequences, discredit and silence Ukrainian voices, and above all, pin the responsibility for the war on Ukrainians.
One last facet of shifting the blame for the war from the aggressor to its victim is that it sets the stage for Ovsyannikova to argue that Russians should escape collective responsibility for the war, leading directly into anti-sanctions and anti-reparations rhetoric. (Despite of course, her throwing up smoke and mirrors and saying that her views are the opposite.) She tries to convince the world that ordinary Russians should not be subjected to sanctions because of their silence, when it is that very same silence over the past several decades that led us to Putin’s regime and today’s war. They were silent when Russia invaded Georgia immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. The silence continued when Russia occupied Transnistria, when they invaded Ossetia, when they waged war in Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Syria, Afghanistan, and many more places, all of which emboldened Russia to continue invading and waging war across the globe with impunity. They were silent in 2014, when the war against Ukraine first started. Not only were they silent, but they approved of these conflicts — Putin’s approval ratings continued to grow. It is only now that the world has finally woken up to Russian global aggression that Russians are trying to save face.
Russia was also never made to reckon with its past, unlike Germany. They never formally acknowledged all the harm, the genocides, or the ethnic cleansing the Russian Republic conducted during the Soviet Union. Generations of Ukrainians have suffered at the hands of ordinary Russians who insist that they have nothing to do with Russia’s culture of colonialism and its imperial ambitions. No reparations were ever made and the world moved on while Russia faced no consequences. As a result, the Russia of today is extremely similar to the Russia of the Soviet Union, both in mindset and in government. It continues with genocide. It continues with ethnic cleansing. That is why reparations are absolutely necessary — if Russia is not forced to take responsibility for its past, it will always continue to wage war.
Where is she now?
Currently, Ovsyannikova is back in Russia, where she did a couple more demonstrations: one was a single-person protest holding up a sign calling Putin a murderer and another was showing yet another sign saying that dead Ukrainian children would haunt Russians in their sleep. Once again, given that Russia is known for arresting actual children for protesting and poisoning Putin’s opponents, the fact that she is still walking around in good health after these demonstrations is suspicious.
It is extremely likely that Russia is using her to present a front to the rest of the world that they have free speech, that people can disagree with the government, and that because people like her exist in Russia, sanctions should be lifted. It is just a ploy to evoke empathy among Western audiences and decrease worldwide support for sanctions against Russia.
Ultimately, Ovsyannikova is not a “good Russian.” She is simply yet another imperialist mouthpiece. With her rhetoric, she regularly insults and demeans Ukrainians, deflects their concerns, and pushes Russian colonialist and imperialist narratives. Just read her Twitter — once you see what to look for, it’s everywhere! As Ovsyannikova proves, there is no such thing as an ex-propagandist and it is high time that Ukrainians get to tell their own stories on their own terms.
Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CegJMpYjGpg/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfZUoZHl4iK/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Her twitter: https://twitter.com/newslady19
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61071163
https://worldcrunch.com/marina-ovsyannikova-die-welt/particle-6
https://twitter.com/tvtoront/status/1533752957740765190
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ovsyannikova-yashin-ukraine/31947497.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_MG0os17XM&ab_channel=GuardianNews
