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.
SNP miss out on Russian sanctions list as 287 MPs banned from entering country
27.04.2022 - 15:25 / dailyrecord.co.uk
No SNP MPs have been sanctioned by Vladimir Putin in a mass Russian ban on politicians in the House of Commons.
The Kremlin is sanctioning a total of 287 British MPs in a retaliatory move against the UK’s action over the Ukrainian invasion, according to Russian media.
Embarrassingly, the hit list published on Russia’s Foreign Ministry website is years out of date.
It includes several Tory MPs who gave up or lost their seats in 2019 after having the whip withdrawn for rebelling over Brexit.
It also excludes some outspoken critics of Putin including Labour's Chris Bryant MP and the SNP’s defence spokesman Stewart Macdonald.
But Boris Johnson said those MPs on the list should see their inclusion as a “badge of honour”.
A dozen senior ministers were sanctioned by Russia earlier this month, but the Kremlin inexplicably left out around 350 other British MPs, the vast majority of whom have vocally condemned Putin’s invasion.
Those named are now banned from travelling to Russia and any assets they hold in the country are likely to be frozen.
In a statement, Putin’s officials accused the MPs of fuelling “unwarranted Russophobic hysteria”.
They singled out the UK’s decision to impose similar restrictions on 386 members of Russia’s lower house of parliament on March 11.
Britain’s asset freezes will cause far great discomfort to Russia’s MPs due to the UK’s status as an attractive destination for foreign investments.
A statement reported by state-owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti said: "These persons, who are now banned from entering the Russian Federation, took the most active part in the establishment of anti-Russian sanctions instruments in London, contribute to the groundless whipping up of Russophobic hysteria in the UK."
The
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