Pussy Riot Expels Freed Ex-Prisoners Now Touring United States

Two former members of Pussy Riot, recently released from Russian penal colonies after serving 21 months for performing a protest song against Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church, brought their message to the United States this week, appearing at a major rock concert in Brooklyn, New York, as well as on several television interview programs.

But six current members of the punk rock band and performance art collective say they’ve kicked the pair out of the group for being sellouts.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, 24, and Masha Alyokhina, 25, were freed from the Russian prison system on December 23, about two months short of the end of their two year-sentence. They were let go under a new, far-reaching Russian amnesty law, ostensibly because each woman is the mother of a five-year-old child.

The two former Pussy Riot members, on the other hand, called their release a publicity stunt by Putin to garner goodwill ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, a charge they repeated this week in the United States.

But as they appeared last night at an Amnesty International benefit concert at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and were interviewed by, among others, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, their former comrades in Pussy Riot disowned the pair, saying they had forgotten the original reasons why Pussy Riot was created.

The six members of Pussy Riot who signed an open letter, each using a pseudonym, criticized Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina for becoming “institutionalized advocates of prisoners’ rights.”

The two apparently former Pussy Riot members announced to CNN that they have formed a new human rights activism group devoted to the rights of prisoners worldwide, and that they hoped to visit American prisons on their brief sojourn through the United States.

“They are being so carried away with the problems in Russian prisons, that they completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of our group,” wrote their onetime colleagues in Pussy Riot, “feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult, all of which, as a matter of fact, was the cause for their unjust punishment.”

The six Pussy Riot members who authored the letter signed their names, Garadja, Fara, Shaiba, Cat, Seraphima and Schumacher.

Earlier, the group split with a third Pussy Riot member who was also arrested for the church performance. In October of 2102, Yekaterina Samutsevitch hired her own attorney and won a suspended sentence, even as her two bandmates remained in prison.

The Pussy Riot members also condemned their former bandmates’ appearance at the Amnesty concert, where they were introduced by Madonna, who had been outspoken in calling for their release during their imprisonment.

“Our performances are always ‘illegal,'” said the other Pussy Riot members, “staged only in unpredictable locations and public places not designed for traditional entertainment.”

Nonetheless, the current Pussy Riot members said they wished they could congratulate their former friends in person, but Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina have refused any contact with the other members of Pussy Riot.

Watch the Stephen Colbert interview with the two former Pussy Riot members, below.

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