A state television employee burst onto the live broadcast of Russia’s most-watched news show on Monday evening, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign that said, “They’re lying to you here,” in an extraordinary act of protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The woman, Marina Ovsyannikova, worked for Channel 1, the state-run television channel whose news broadcast she stormed, according to a Russian rights group that is giving her legal support. The group also released a video in which Ovsyannikova says she is “deeply ashamed” to have worked to produce “Kremlin propaganda”.

The news show, Vremya, is among the Kremlin’s flagship propaganda outlets, watched by millions of Russians every evening. The off-script intervention underscored how dissent is seeping into public consciousness in Russia, even after President Vladimir V. Putin has stifled opposition to the war and has enacted a law to punish anyone spreading whatever the government deems “false news” about its Ukraine invasion with up to 15 years in prison.

“We are Russian people, thinking and smart ones,” she said in the video she recorded, calling for Russians to protest against the war. “Only we have the power to stop all this craziness.”

On Monday evening, Ovsyannikova walked onto the set as the anchor was describing Russian talks with Belarus over how to soften the blow from western sanctions, online videos show.

She unfurled a sign with a Ukrainian and a Russian flag that said, in English, “No war” and “Russians against war” In Russian, it said: “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”

The anchor Yekaterina Andreyeva, a veteran who has hosted the Vremya newscast for more than two decades, continued to read her script even as Ovsyannikova protested behind her.

Within a few seconds, the show cut away from the set. Afterwards, according to the Tass state news agency, Channel 1 said it was “investigating an incident with an outsider in the frame during a live broadcast”.

Ovsyannikova was detained after the protest and was being held at a small police station at Moscow’s Ostankino broadcasting centre, according to OVD-Info, an activist group that supports Russians detained for protesting. More details on her condition weren’t available.

New York Times News Service