A TWITTER account claiming to be the Russian TV news editor who sparked worldwide headlines with an on-air anti-war protest has had its credentials called into question.
The account claims to be Marina Ovsyannikova, the editor at Channel One who ran onto the Russian television set with a sign saying: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”
It shared statements on Tuesday morning purporting to be from Ovsyannikova, tweeting: “I don't regret what I did. Whatever the consequences, I will wear it as a badge of honor.”
The account put out another, writing: “I don't know what will happen to me any time soon. My lawyer told me I might be facing time in jail from 5 to 10 years according to the criminal code.
"I don't regret it. I need your endorsement though.”
The posts garnered tens of thousands of likes, with the account soon accruing a similar number of followers after being shared by prominent Twitter accounts and politicians.
However, its credentials were called into question after suspicious details about the account were highlighted.
Firstly, it was only created a matter of days ago, on March 9. Since then, it had only tweeted 30 times, and exclusively in English.
The image used as a profile picture by the account seemingly came from a video of Ovsyannikova shared by the human rights organisation OVD-Info.
OVD-Info has confirmed to The National that the account was fake.
While the organisation said that the journalist had been detained after her protest, the Twitter account put out a post two hours after the broadcast.
It wrote, in English: “To all Russians, the least you could do is go out and protest. Don't be afraid! They can't lock us all away!”
Furthermore, the account’s Twitter handle was changed multiple times on Tuesday morning, with variations including @MarinaOvsvvy_, @MarinaOvsy, and @MarinaOvso.
The BBC’s Hamzah Abbas also noticed the inconsistencies, tweeting that on March 14 the account had the name @juanarrendondo_.
"As suspected," Abbas wrote, "the account is fake".
As suspected, the account is fake. The account had a completely different @ yesterday, going by @JuanArrendondo_ pic.twitter.com/mnybKwQK30
— Hamzah Abbas (@HamzahAbbasBBC) March 15, 2022
This appears to be a slight misspelling of Juan Arredondo, the renowned photojournalist injured in Ukraine as his colleague Brent Renaud was murdered.
The account’s likes were initially full of posts about Arredondo, later switching to be almost exclusively posts that mention Marina Ovsyannikova by her full name.
The list of users it was following was dominated by New York Times journalists, suggesting an attempt to link itself to Arredondo, and accounts purporting to be linked to the “anonymous” hacking group.
The account now appears to have been removed altogether. It is unclear if Twitter took action, but the social media platform has been approached for comment.
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