Russian journalist Marina Ovsiannikova refuses asylum offered by Macron

Marina Ovsiannikova “does not want to leave” Russia. The Russian journalist, who became a muse against the war after appearing on a pro-Kremlin newscast to denounce the offensive in Ukraine, refused Emmanuel Macron’s offer of asylum.

“I am a patriot, my son is even more so. We don’t want to leave under any circumstances, we don’t want to go anywhere, ”she said in an interview with the German magazine The mirror aired Wednesday night. The French president had said he was ready on Tuesday to offer him “consular protection”, either at the embassy or by granting him asylum.

The 43-year-old woman made a name for herself by bursting live on Monday evening during Russia’s most watched television news, 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 media controlled by the power.

The risk of a heavy prison sentence

After being arrested, she was immediately sentenced to a simple fine and released. However, she still faces criminal prosecution punishable by heavy prison terms, under the terms of a recent law cracking down on 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.