Putin Has Pussy Riot Members Detained

For those of you who like bullshit with your borscht:

This morning, Maria Alekhina and Nadezdha Tolokonnikova, two member of the protest group Pussy Riot, were sitting in a McDonalds in Sochi when "around fifty" plainclothes police officers arrested them "for robbery," according to their Twitter feeds. They were out of prison for a little less than two months, just enough for the world to feel slightly better about attending the gangster Olympics. And now the facade from Russia's Potemkin human rights has been abruptly pulled away. If Putin's plan with the Sochi Olympics was to mock democratic values, to show that everyone in the West can be played for suckers, and to demonstrate our hypocrisy to the rest of the world, he has completely succeeded.

After questioning, the two were released without charges being filed. Let's hope this causes much more trouble for Czar Vladimir than for these two courageous women.

UPDATE:  Russian security goons broke up an impromptu performance by Pussy Riot in Sochi by pepper spraying and lashing the group's members with whips.  (Remember this when you tune in to NBC's "nothing to see here, move along" coverage of the Olympics).  From now on, "Cossacks" will be synonymous to "cowards."

(Photo:  Maria, left, and Nadezdha)

Amnesty For (Some) Russian Activists

Russian Czar President Vladimir Putin granted amnesty to former oil tycoon and political rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky and to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot, in moves generally interpreted as "please to get off my case about human rights violations prior to the Sochi Winter Olympics."  Khodorkovsky has already pledged to stay involved in human rights issues in Russia and, as for the two Pussy Rioters:

Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was freed from prison on Monday under an amnesty that allowed for her early release from a two-year sentence for a protest in a church against President Vladimir Putin.

Tolokonnikova shouted "Russia without Putin" after she was freed from a prison in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. Bandmate Maria Alyokhina was released from a different jail hours earlier and dismissed the amnesty as a propaganda stunt.

Meanwhile, on-going repression of environmental activists and recently-passed homophobic laws make it clear that, as Ms. Alyokhina noted, the amnesty for the "star" prisoners was a propaganda stunt - and a futile, ham-fisted one at that.

Pussy Riot Update

Via Reuters:

"Two female members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot convicted of protesting against President Vladimir Putin in a cathedral have been sent to prisons far from Moscow despite requesting to serve out their terms in the capital, a lawyer said on Monday.

"Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in August and sentenced to two years in jail, a punishment that many in the West said was too harsh. [snip]

"A third convicted member of Pussy Riot, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on appeal when a court suspended her sentence after her lawyer argued that she had been pulled away from the cathedral's altar before the protest song began."

More Putin "Managed Democracy."