A protester has interrupted a Russian news programme, holding a sign which told viewers: “They are lying to you.”
During the live broadcast on Channel One, the country’s foremost state TV station, a woman walked onto the set behind the presenter with a placard denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In English, it read: “No war. Russians against war.”
And in Russian it said: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
While she stood behind the presenter, the protester could be heard saying: “Stop the war! No war! Stop the war! No war!”
She could still be heard after broadcast was switched to alternative output.
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Channel One said it is conducting an internal review into the incident, Tass news agency reported.
The station is broadcast throughout Russia and has more than 250 million viewers worldwide.
Kira Yarmysh, spokeswoman for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, posted footage of the incident on Twitter with the caption: “Wow, that girl is cool.”
The protester also tweeted a video of herself before her demonstration, in which she blamed President Vladimir Putin for the war and apologised for her actions on television.
She also said that she had been working for Channel One “for the last few years”.
“I’ve been doing Kremlin propaganda and I’m very ashamed of it – that I let people lie from TV screens and allowed the Russian people to be zombified,” she said.
In recent weeks, Russia has introduced broad new legislation designed to clamp down on free speech, which it says is to prevent “public dissemination of deliberately false information”.
If charged under the law, the Channel One protester could face between three and 15 years in jail.
