A Moscow court docket has at this time dominated the feminist punk protest collective Pussy Riot to be an “extremist organisation”. The choice might see any particular person or organisation discovered to be exhibiting help for the collective’s actions or social media posts face the specter of prosecution.
Various Russian writers and artists have beforehand been formally labelled “international brokers” by the nation’s authorities, which is step one in the direction of the extremism categorisation and is sufficient to prohibit the dissemination of their works. An extremism ruling can criminalise their very point out, and can successfully ban Pussy Riot’s actions in Russia.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding member of the group, spelled out the decision’s penalties in a latest X submit. She instructed The Insider, a Russian investigative website that’s blocked in Russia, that the purpose of the ruling is “to erase the very existence of Pussy Riot from the consciousness of Russians”.
“A balaclava underneath your pillow, our tune in your laptop, or a like on our submit—all of this could result in a jail sentence,” she continued. “Pussy Riot have successfully change into those-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned in Russia.”
“Once we have been on trial for our Punk Prayer, we instructed the choose and prosecutors that although we have been in a cage, we have been nonetheless freer than them. A decade and a half later, that is nonetheless true…If refusing to maintain your mouth shut is extremism, then so be it, we’ll be extremists.”
The group’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, instructed Russia’s state-owned Tass information company concerning the ruling, which was handed down in a closed listening to. He mentioned it takes impact instantly and that an enchantment is deliberate.
Pussy Riot rose to fame after two of its members, Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina, spent almost two years in jail for his or her prescient 2012 work, Punk Prayer. The efficiency, which riled in opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, noticed the pair don vibrant balaclavas inside Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and because the Kremlin intensified its crackdown on free speech, each artists fled the nation. Alekhina escaped with the assistance of the Icelandic efficiency artist Ragnar Kjartansson.
In September 2025, one other Moscow court docket sentenced 5 of Pussy Riot’s members to eight to 13 years in jail in absentia for spreading “fakes” concerning the Russian army.
