Pussy Riot Founding Member Sentenced To 15 Days As Group Pressed By Authorities

MOSCOW -- A founding member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, has been sentenced to 15 days in jail on a charge of "disobeying police" amid a crackdown on the group's members in recent days.

The court sentenced Alyokhina on June 24, two days after she was detained for questioning while traveling to get a vaccination against COVID-19. Police said they took her into custody because they had information "about her plans to perform an unsanctioned protest action on the day of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union."

It is not clear where the police got that information and the next day the charge was changed to disobeying police.

A day earlier, three other members of the protest group were sentenced to 15 days in jail after a Moscow court found Lyusya Shtein and Anna Kuzminykh guilty of disobeying police orders, while Aleksandr Sofeyev was sentenced for minor hooliganism.

Another Pussy Riot member, Nika Nikulshina, was sentenced on June 21 to 15 days in jail on a similar charge of "disobeying police."

Pussy Riot came to prominence in 2012 when Alyokhina and other members of the group, including Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral to protest against ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Their protest, the performance of a song they described as a "punk prayer," took place as Putin was campaigning for his return to the presidency.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were convicted on a charge of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and sentenced to two years in a penal colony.

They were close to completing their sentences when they were granted an amnesty in December 2013.

The pair dismissed their amnesty as a propaganda stunt aimed at improving Putin's image abroad ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

With reporting by Mediazona