A fake Twitter account pretended to be a Russian editor who went viral for protesting the war on live television. Archives and screenshots show that this is the second member of the media it’s pretended to be in recent days.
Information is already heavily censored in Russia. President Vladimir Putin has greatly intensified censorship during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is now a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison to disseminate what Russia defines as “fake news” about the military.
Independent media and journalists have largely complied with the new law. Some have fled.
On Monday evening, Marina Ovsyannikova took a stand for free expression. Ovsyannikova, an editor on the state-run Channel 1, walked onto a live broadcast to oppose the war. Osyannikova yelled, “Stop the war!” the New York Times reports, and carried a sign reading “No war” in English and “They’re lying to you here” in Russian.
A Russian rights group that’s representing her also released a video in which she said she was “deeply ashamed” to have helped produce “Kremlin propaganda,” the Times reports.
Ovsyannikova was swiftly detained by police. She was fined and released on Tuesday.
Her bravery made her an international sensation overnight. It also made her a target for internet users chasing clout.
Early Tuesday morning, Twitter users began flagging an account pretending to be Ovsyannikova.
An archive of the account, @MarinaOvsy, shows that it was created sometime this month. Its tweets implied that the news segment during which Ovsyannikova protested was actually staged.
“Russians always lie. News on Russian TV are not live, but have a 5-10 mins delay,” reads one. “There is no way someone could go live with that banner without being authorized for that. It’s just a part of Russian propaganda to make them look like victims of Putin’s regime.”
Taras Mishchenko, editor of Mezha Media, tweeted that Ovsyannikova’s lawyers said the @MarinaOvsy account was fake. Mishchenko asked people to report it.
After people started reporting it was a fake, the @MariaOvsy account reportedly cycled through various similarly spelled handles in an apparent attempt to evade enforcement. None of the handles it used remain live as of this writing.
The account has since been suspended.
As several pointed out, the @MariaOvsy account had previously used the handle @JuanArrendono_ and screen name Juan Arrendondo. Its bio described the account as belonging to a New York Times correspondent “covering the news in Ukraine,” an archive shows.
The profile picture and bio match that of the similarly named Juan Arredondo, an American photojournalist who was injured in a shooting by Russian forces in Ukraine that killed fellow journalist Brent Renaud earlier this month.
It’s not clear what outlet Arredondo and Renaud were working for at the time. Renaud had an old Times press badge on him at the time of his death, which led to early reports he was working for the paper. The Times subsequently said that he wasn’t on assignment for the outlet.
The fake Arredondo Twitter account gave the correct handle for his verified Instagram account. Its bio misspelled Arredondo’s last name in the URL for his website the same way it was misspelled on the fake Twitter. It also falsely said that his actual Twitter account was “not functional.”
Like the various fake Ovsyannikova accounts, the fake Arredondo account no longer exists.
A Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Dot via email on Tuesday that the accounts were permanently suspended for violating its rules against “ban evasion.”