Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina escapes Russia as Putin cracks down on dissidents

11.05.2022 - 10:47 / nme.com

Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina has escaped from Russia as president Vladimir Putin continues to crack down on dissidents in the country.Alyokhina, along with her bandmates, has been arrested and imprisoned multiple times over the past decade and more for publicly protesting Putin’s rule, most recently last year when she was detained for 48 hours after attending protests encouraging others to protest on social media.Amid the continued Russian invasion of Ukraine, a new story in The New York Times reveals that Alyokhina was under house arrest and, when authorities decided to turn that into a 21-day jail sentence last month, she decided to flee Russia.The story outlines Alyokhina’s escape, which included posing as a food courier and being placed on Russia’s wanted list after being refused entry into Belarus on account of her Russian passport having been confiscated by authorities.The report then reveals that Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson was able to assist Alyokhina in getting her a travel document from a European country that allowed her to travel freely from Russia to the EU. It adds that she has now travelled to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.“I still don’t understand completely what I’ve done,” she said in the piece.

“A lot of magic happened last week. It sounds like a spy novel.”The members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned in August 2012 for their now infamous “punk prayer” protest in Moscow’s Cathedral Of Christ The Savior in February of that year.Alyokhina went on hunger strike the following year after she was refused the right to attend her parole hearing and told NME from her prison camp that she would not flee Russia after she was freed.Earlier this year, her bandmates Nadya Tolokonnikova and Nika Nikulshina