French prosecutors are investigating the reason behind why an exiled Russian journalist, identified as Marina Ovsyannikova, was suddenly taken ill.
The individual is known to have staged a high-profile protest against Moscow's war on Ukraine. The director general of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, said that he had already met with the Russian television journalist after she felt malaise outside of her Paris apartment.
Potential Poisoning of Russian Journalist
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Deloire said that the possibility that the Russian journalist was poisoned had not been ruled out. However, he noted that Ovsyannikova has started feeling better since the incident outside her apartment.
A spokesperson for the Paris Tribunal prosecutor's office said by telephone that they had opened an investigation into the incident. They noted that, for the moment, the only information that they have on the issue is that Ovsyannikova said she had a malaise.
The Russian journalist briefly interrupted the main evening news program Russia's Channel One in March 2022. At the time, she put on the air a placard that read, "Stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here," as per US News.
The individual was later sentenced in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for a subsequent protest where she stood on a river embankment opposite the Kremlin and held up a poster that called Russian President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists.
A year ago, the 45-year-old Russian journalist fled Russia with her daughter after escaping house arrest, as revealed by her lawyer, who said she had no case to answer. Following the reported malaise, French police started to investigate Ovsyannikova's apartment as part of the investigation.
Reports without Borders helped Ovsyannikova escape Russia and settle in France, adding that its team was "at her side" since she sought medical attention. The group is also known by its French acronym RSF and noted that it did not have further information regarding the incident.
Russian Dissent
After Ovsyannikova's initial protest on live TV, she was charged with disparaging the Russian military and was fined $270. According to the Associated Press, the eight-and-a-half-year sentence against the Russian journalist was made over allegedly spreading false information about Moscow's army.
The development was seen as the latest example of a Russian crackdown on dissent that has intensified since Moscow's Ukraine invasion nearly two years ago. Additionally, the scale of the crackdown has been unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia.
The situation comes after Russia passed a new law in 2022 that makes anyone the government deems to have spread "false" information on the war in Ukraine face up to 15 years of imprisonment. Top critics of the Kremlin have received lengthy prison terms since then, and independent news sites were blocked while independent journalists have fled the nation in fear of prosecution.
Among the most famous Russian dissidents is opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was convicted of promoting "extremism" by a Russian court. According to CBS News, this led to the extension of his already-lengthy time in prison by nearly two decades.
