The courage and risk of freedom – La Croix International

On the evening of March 14 a journalist named Marina Ovsiannikova interrupted the main Russian TV newscast by holding up a sign opposing the war in Ukraine.

"No to war. Do not believe the propaganda. Here you are being lied to," read the poster she held up for a few seconds behind the presenter's back before the live feed was cut.

The scene went viral on social media and was reported on television stations around the world.

Ovsiannikova instantly became one of the faces of domestic resistance against an autocratic regime that uses lies and repression to keep its population in ignorance about what is happening in Ukraine.

The journalist knew the risks she was running. She did not care.

Her gesture may seem ridiculously small. But, in fact, it was an act of courage that has universal significance.

Ovsiannikova publicly testified that there is no truth without a commitment to freedom or without taking risks.

There is no authentically human life without personal involvement, without giving of oneself when fundamental values are threatened.

A few words hastily brandished on a television screen will not be enough to end the war. But they can elicit the will to act, which has remained buried or repressed until now.

They can restore confidence so that people can commit themselves, in turn, to the resistance to barbarism.

They can stimulate the courage of men and women who need to know that they are not alone in carrying the dream of a world of justice and peace, of truth and freedom.

As Pope Francis likes to repeat, "We are not saved alone."

Deep down, this is what Marina Ovsiannikova's few, hastily written words also tell us.

They are words that invite us to risk our own freedom with and for others.

Dominique Greiner is a senior editor at La Croix, as well as a moral theologian and Assumptionist priest.

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The courage and risk of freedom - La Croix International