Marina Ovsyannikova, Russian journalist who famously interrupted a live state TV news broadcast with a sign protesting Putin’s war on Ukraine, addressed the 18th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 18, 2026.
Full Prepared Remarks:
I am a journalist from Russia.
For more than twenty years, I worked for state Russian television.
When Vladimir Putin announced his so-called “special military operation” against Ukraine, I was working in the main evening news broadcast.
At that moment to be honest, I was part of the huge Kremlin’s propaganda machine —a machine that spreads lies and hides the truth from people inside Russia.
But the war against Ukraine was a point of no return for me.
I could not remain silent any longer. So on March 14, 2022, I walked into a live broadcast and shouted: “No to war! Stop the war!”
In my hands, I held a poster that read:
“NO WAR. STOP THE WAR. DON’T BELIEVE PROPAGANDA. THEY ARE LYING TO YOU HERE. RUSSIANS AGAINST THE WAR.”
That image traveled around the world within minutes. My protest lasted only six seconds. But those six seconds were the truth —in an endless stream of Kremlin lies.
They arrested me immediately. My lawyer told me that according new law
so-called “fake news” about the Russian army, I could face up to 15 years in prison.
But I was prepared to go to prison — for the right to speak the truth and to oppose the war.
The Russian authorities didn’t know how to handle my case. So they tried to ignore it, hoping I would get scared, stay silent, and just quietly leave the country.
But I didn’t stay silent. I continued speaking out against the war and published anti-war statements.
After a Russian missile strike killed children in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, I protested again — this time near the Kremlin. I put two baby dolls at my feet and held a sign that read:
“Putin is a killer. His solders are fascists. How many more children must die before you stop?”
At six o’clock in the morning, around a dozen police officers broke into my home and took me to a detention center. I spent the night in a cell.
The next day, a judge placed me under house arrest while I had to wait for my verdict.
That was the moment when I realized: If I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a Russian prison, I have to escape.
So 9 days before the trial, I cut off my electronic bracelet.
And crossed the border illegally, with my daughter, under the cover of night.
Our escape was extremely dangerous. We changed cars seven times.
We spent the night moving through forests and plowed fields,
getting stuck in the mud, hiding from the headlights of border patrol vehicles.
The stress was unbearable. But we escaped. And today, we are living in France as refugees.
Since then, the Russian authorities designated me as a “foreign agent,” an enemy of the state. They sentenced me in absentia to eight and a half years in prison.
My former husband, who supports the so-called “special military operation,” used the courts to revoke my parental rights.
And yet — I consider myself lucky. I managed to escape from Russia. Thousands of others did not. According to human rights organizations, there are about 2000 political prisoners in Russia now— more than in the late Soviet period.
Today, I stand before you not to speak about myself. I stand here to speak about them.
Look at this photo. This is Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist and mother of two, She was sentenced to six years in prison for just one anti-war post. In prison, she was beaten by guards and psychologically abused. She was forcibly given antipsychotic drugs. She was put in solitary confinement at least 13 times. The conditions were terrible- there were rats running around. They tortured her with loud noises- drilling holes in the wall of her cell and using jackhammers right next to her. She has tried to take her own life three times. And even after all of this, the Russian state keeps bringing new charges against her.
This is 15-year-old Arseny Turbin. The youngest political prisoner in Russia. He was arrested for handing out leaflets. Leaflets that asked one simple question: “Do you really want a president like this?” He was interrogated alone. Without his parents. Without a lawyer. Investigators edited the transcripts and added a confession he never made. Then they sentenced him to five years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organization.” Five years…He was only 15
This is municipal deputy Alexei Gorinov. He was the first person in Russia to be sentenced for speaking out against the war. In March 2022, he suggested holding a minute of silence for children killed in Ukraine. In any normal democratic country, that would be seen as a simple human gesture. But in Russia, that small act of compassion was enough to send him to prison for seven years. In prison, they secretly recorded him and for anti-war remarks he made in private conversations—they extended his sentence by three more years.
This is pediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova. Her case shows just how far this repressive system is willing to go. She was arrested after the mother of a seven-year-old patient reported her. Allegedly, she made an anti-war comment during a routine medical appointment. For that unproven remark, the state sentenced her to five and a half years in prison. Five and a half years……For something that may never have happened.
Engineer Igor Baryshnikov was sentenced to seven and a half years for just two social media posts (can you imagine, two Facebook posts!??) Now, he is in critical condition, quite literally hanging between life and death. His lawyer warned: “If Igor Baryshnikov is not included in an exchange this year, we may lose him.”
I could list the names of Russian political prisoners endlessly – the theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, Navalny’s lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Alexey Liptser, Igor Sergunin and Maria Bonzler, politician Lev Shlosberg, historian Aleksander Skobov, journalist Antonina Favorskaya, mathematician Azat Miftakhov , artist Ludmila Razumova, stand-up comedian Artemiy Ostanin. These are not isolated cases. They are part of a systematic campaign of political repression.
Many of them risk of dying in prison. They urgently need international attention. They need diplomatic pressure.
They need your voices.
Please help to save political prisoners in Russia.
Thank you.
