Russia’s now stateless, anti-Putin punk tells the story of her resistance, imprisonment and escape..
On 26th June 2025, Maria Alyokhina brought her Riot Days show to het Paard venue in The Hague, The Netherlands. Before the concert, Pussy Riot original member Maria was interviewed by Dutch journalists Hubert Smeets and Stefan de Vries, for the Station Kyiv podcast, about Eastern Europe. Hubert Smeets is co-host of that podcast. Stefan de Vries contributes to various Dutch TV news shows.
Started in 2011 as a Russian feminist political protest and performance art collective, based in Moscow, Pussy Riot became popular for their provocative punk music. The group staged guerrilla gigs in public places, which were filmed as music videos and posted on the internet.
Arrested and imprisoned in 2012 after a performance the group put on at a Moscow cathedral, Maria Alyokhina wrote the book ‘Riot Days’ about this experience, upon which her Pussy Riot show is based. The top photo of this report shows Maria in The Hague with a small Ukrainian flag on her shoe, expressing her opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine, and her electronic ankle bracelet, which the Putin regime forced her to wear during house arrest, and which she still had on while fleeing across the Russian border.
The first question for Maria was if she had been in the Netherlands before. Yes, she said: in 2019, when Pussy Riot played here in the Paard venue. This video is a summary of that 2019 show:
Russia, Maria says, is now an “authoritarian hell”. However, Putin did not establish a total dictatorship in one minute. Maria said that if 15 years ago, someone had told her that in 15 years, one would get five years in prison for a LGBTQ rainbow flag, then she would have laughed. But now, that is reality. In 2010, an artists’ collective, forerunners of Pussy Riot, played a practical joke, making the secret police building in Saint Petersburg look ridiculous. That collective was not punished; they got an artistic prize.
So when, in 2012, Pussy Riot did a similar stunt to make the political (and religious) establishment look ridiculous, they did not expect the harsh governmental persecution which resulted. Four Pussy Riot women went by Moscow metro to Kropotkin station (named after the anarchist author). From there, they walked to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, for a punk performance against Putin.
The church security men stopped them and led Pussy Riot to the exit.
Alexander Dugin, an adviser to Putin, attacked Pussy Riot, as “these immoral girls”. He said that the “very conservative and top-down” ideology of the Putin regime, hating liberalism and democracy, required that there should be no separation between the powers of the Russian Orthodox Church and the government. He and Putin believed that Pussy Riot was a threat to that conservative ideology. In their Riot Days show, Pussy Riot mention that the constitution of the Russian Federation says that religion and state are separate. And that the Putin regime violates that constitution.
Maria Alyokhina became one of two members of Pussy Riot sentenced to two years imprisonment as punishment for their ‘punk prayer’ in the cathedral. At first, in a prison. Then, in a labour camp in the north of the Ural mountains, with minus 35 degrees centigrade in winter, sometimes even colder. “One hundred women in a room. Two toilets. No hot water. Working six days a week, twelve hours a day. Salary three euros a month. Making uniforms for the Russian army; most of their uniforms are made by prisoners. I did not lose these two years of my life: I learned”.
Just before the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in southern Russia, the Pussy Riot women were freed. They went to Sochi.
They sang their song ‘Putin will teach you to love the Motherland‘ there. Cossacks attacked them violently.
More and more civil liberties were abolished. First, mass demonstrations were banned: organisers facing eight years in prison. Then, in 2020, demonstrations by a single person were also banned.
Maria kept being arrested and released on and off during the next years. After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, she wrote the anti-war song ‘Mama, don’t watch TV‘.
“Everyone was shocked. They could not eat. They could not work.”
Maria was put under house arrest. They arrested her, not for anything, just for being herself. She did not want to leave Russia. Yet, she had to escape the country, though her official documents had been taken away. She escaped, disguised in a green meal delivery woman’s costume, leaving her phone behind as it would betray her…
She did not remove her electronic ankle bracelet, as removing it would have alerted police that she was escaping her house arrest. With help from Icelandic diplomats, she managed to cross the border to safety.
“I have no home now, I travel from concert to concert. When will I go back? I want to, but I don’t know when. Maybe after Putin’s war has stopped?”
What should Europe do against Putin? “Europe should unite against Putin. Not as NATO, the United States are unreliable. Look at how Trump hunts immigrants, in a nation of immigrants! There are also Putin influences in European extreme right parties, like the AFD in Germany. What happened in Russia with Putin may definitely also happen in Europe. Russia is not a special place.”
After a a huge round of applause for Maria, we prepared for the concert in het Paard later in the evening – look out for my review coming soon in Punktuation!
Main Photo Credit: GERIE HERMANS
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