Maria Alyokhina, Russian punk activist: The price of political art was prison

Vitaly Shevchenko speaks to Maria Alyokhina, founding member of the Russian punk activist group Pussy Riot, about the power and the price of protest.

Pussy Riot came to the world’s attention with its Punk Prayer, an angry anti-Putin anthem performed in a Moscow church. Maria Alyokhina spent two years incarcerated in a penal colony as a result. It was worth it, she says, to show the world what life under President Putin was like.

She was freed under an amnesty ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but her ongoing activism saw her living under surveillance and then house arrest, eventually fleeing Russia in a dramatic escape. Today, she continues to challenge Putin’s regime from outside her home country.

Thank you to the Ukrainecast team for its help in making this programme.

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Presenter: Vitaly Shevchenko
Producer: Lucy Sheppard
Editor: Justine Lang

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(Image: Maria Alyokhina. Credit: Ina Fassbender/AFP)