INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A Russian court on Thursday placed former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who denounced President Vladimir Putin's attack on
Ukraine live on air, under house arrest until October.On Wednesday, investigators detained Ovsyannikova, 44, and charged her with spreading
March, Ovsyannikova, then an editor at Channel One television, made global headlines when she barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya
to a one-woman protest in mid-July near the Kremlin, when Ovsyannikova held a poster that read "Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are
placed in a cage surrounded by several policemen.She held a sign that read "May the dead children haunt you in your dreams".Her lawyer
Dmitry Zakhvatov wrote on messaging app Telegram that "even" the Soviet Union's most brutal serial killer Andrei Chikatilo was not guarded
so closely.During a closed-door hearing, the court ruled that Ovsyannkova be placed under house arrest until October 9."I even don't know
Ukraine on February 24 has been virtually outlawed in Russia.French President Emmanuel Macron has offered Ovsyannikova, who worked for
Russian state TV for 19 years, asylum or other forms of consular protection.Earlier this year prominent Putin critics Ilya Yashin and
Vladimir Kara-Murza were put in pre-trial jail for denouncing Moscow's Ukraine offensive.The criminal probe against Ovsyannikova was
launched after two Moscow courts ordered the journalist to pay fines for discrediting the Russian army on various occasions.In the months
following her TV protest, Ovsyannikova spent time abroad, working for Germany's Die Welt for three months.In early July, she said she was
returning to Russia to settle a dispute over the custody of her two children.Since her return, Ovsyannikova came out to support opposition
politician Yashin in court and published anti-government posts online
She was briefly detained by police near her home in mid-July.
