Five members of Pussy Riot have been sentenced in absentia to prison in Russia on charges relating to anti-war performances that critiqued the country’s military actions.
- Read More: Who are Pussy Riot? A guide to the Russian activist group who crashed the World Cup Final
Reports from Mediazona – the outlet co-founded by band members in the feminist punk collective – which Rolling Stone later corroborated, revealed the members sentenced included Maria Alyokhina, Diana Burkot, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, and Alina Petrova.
The jail terms handed down at Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ranged from eight to 13 years, with the charges stemming from a December 2022 music video titled ‘Mama, Don’t Watch TV’, which authorities alleged spread “false information” about the Russian military killing Ukrainian civilians, as well as a later performance held in April 2024. Pussy Riot were in Munich, Germany, at that time, and one member had reportedly urinated on a portrait of Vladimir Putin.
Through the band’s legal representatives, the five Pussy Riot members rejected the charges, claiming the trial and sentences are politically motivated in a statement given to Rolling Stone.
Burkot said that as the writer behind the music heard in ‘Mama, Don’t Watch TV’, she stood “by every single word, and my anti-war stance is clear.”
“The full-scale war against Ukraine has been going on for more than three years. And I continue to believe: Ukraine must win, and Putin must face trial in The Hague,” Burkot added. “The Russian government is a textbook example of patriarchy — the worst kind of abuser: a tyrant, a narcissist, a gaslighter, a toxic manipulator who lives off the destruction of others’ will.”
She then urged “every person in this world to use their voice,” and went on to say that collective activism was the only way to “resist and overcome the crisis of democracy”.
Burkot said that thankfully, the Russian government has “no access to my physical body,” but that “even if I were in Russia, I would say the same thing: go fuck yourself.”
Pussy Riot first gained notoriety for their 2012 protest piece, ‘A Punk Prayer’, which was a response to accusations of electoral fraud and rigging in Putin’s re-election. The protest resulted in the imprisonment of members Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova, though they were released early in light of an amnesty bill passed shortly before Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Since then, members of the collective have staged multiple protests, including a performance at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, a pitch invasion during the 2018 World Cup Finals, and at the Indiana State Capitol, in response to the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The same year, Tolokonnikova released the debut Pussy Riot mixtape ‘Matriarchy Now’.
In 2023, the Pussy Riot collective were awarded with the Woody Guthrie Prize. Tolokonnikova has also teamed up with various artists over the last few years, including a single with Avenged Sevenfold, a collaboration with Nova Twins, and a whole mixtape executive produced by Tove Lo, which featured guest spots from Salem Ilese, Big Freedia, Hudson Mohawke and iLoveMakonnen.
A scripted television series about Pussy Riot was also announced in 2023 by Nadya Tolokonnikova, who expressed her ambition with the show to “inspire a new generation of rebels”.
