What Ukraine war news looks like from Russia : NPR

Russian Channel One employee Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted a live broadcast in Moscow on Monday, holding up a poster reading "No War" and condemning Moscow's military action in Ukraine.An extraordinary event unfolded on Russian television late Monday: Mid-newscast on main state TV outlet Channel One, a woman rushed in behind the anchor and unfurled a handwritten poster."No War," read the sign. They're lying to you here."The cameras quickly cut away, and the protester — Channel One employee Marina Ovsyannikova — was later detained.Amid the Kremlin's campaign to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, the scene was a rare off-message moment in an otherwise heavily scripted effort to shape Russians' perceptions of events on the ground.For years, state TV has remained Russians' top source of news, balanced only by a handful of independent and often digital outlets. Their screens present accounts of a humanitarian Kremlin mission — one in which "surgical" airstrikes target Ukrainian nationalists and spare civilians, where American agents seek to deploy anti-Russian bioweapons and where Ukraine's leaders are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons to attack the Russian homeland.The shaping of the Russian narrative begins with words — both chosen and left unsaid.The new law, passed this month, forbids journalists who are covering Ukraine from using the words "war" or "invasion," in favor of "special military operation" — the term used by President Vladimir Putin when he announced Russian forces would enter Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers in Donbas "republics" recognized by Moscow just hours prior.An additional law penalizes any coverage of the military that contradicts the government's accounts or is deemed as denigrating the armed forces. Marina Ovsyannikova, the editor at state broadcaster Channel One who protested Russian military action in Ukraine by interrupting a Monday news broadcast, speaks to the media in Moscow as she leaves the Ostankinsky District Court on Tuesday after being fined for breaching protest laws.