Marina Ovsyannikova, a member of the Russian media who protested the invasion of Ukraine on live state television in March, was briefly held in Moscow on Sunday, according to posts on her social media accounts.
Two law enforcement officers were seen leading Marina toward a white van in a post on her Telegram channel that read, "Marina has been detained." Ovsyannikova soon after shared pictures of herself with two dogs on her Facebook page.
"Went for a walk with the dogs, just stepped outside the gate, people in uniform approached me," she wrote. "Now I'm sitting in Krasnoselsky ministry of internal affairs," talking about a police station in a Moscow neighborhood.
Three hours later, Ovsyannikova said she had been released. "I'm home. Everything is okay. But now I know it's always best to bring a suitcase and passport if you go out." she wrote on her Facebook page.
In March, Ovsyannikova, who was working for Russian state television at the time, shot into the studio to protest the war in Ukraine while a live newscast was in progress.
She was yelling anti-Ukrainian war chants while holding up a sign behind the studio host.
"NO WAR. Stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here," the sign stated in both English and Russian. Another sentence that appeared to read "Russians against war" was partially obscured.
The extraordinary act of dissent occurred on day 19 of the war, which began on February 24 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in what it calls a special military operation.
As the news anchor read from her teleprompter, the protester could be heard shouting, "Stop the war. No to war."
Before the broadcaster changed to a different report to take the protester off the air, she could be seen and heard for a few seconds.
Even in his nightly video broadcast, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to the protester:
"I am grateful to those Russians who do not stop trying to convey the truth. To those who fight disinformation and tell the truth, real facts to their friends and loved ones," Zelenskyy said. "And personally to the woman who entered the studio of Channel One with a poster against the war."
Following social media posts from July 15 in which she is seen holding a poster calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists, she was briefly detained on Sunday. The poster asked, "How many more children must die before you will stop?"
In April, the German news organization Welt hired Ovsyannikova as a correspondent. She said on Facebook earlier this month that she had to go back to Russia because she needed to defend her parental rights in court against her husband.
