Maria Alyokhina, a member of the punk group Pussy Riot, which has long protested against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, said she escaped the country disguised as a food delivery boy.
Alyokhina told the New York Times that while she has previously refused to leave the country even after being detained several times and spending stints in prison, she finally decided to leave after Russian authorities told her she would be serving time in a prison colony.
She was under “effective house arrest,” the Times said, and openly criticized the war in Ukraine.
To avoid being identified, she said she wore a puffy green jacket normally worn by food delivery people. In the photos she shared with the Times, her girlfriend is seen wearing the jacket with a large bag of food on her back.
During her week-long journey from Russia to Belarus and then to Lithuania, Alyokhina wore laceless platform boots. (In prison, wet wipes were used in place of shoelaces, which were not allowed.) The Times reported that she will wear the same boots when Pussy Riot begins touring this month.
“I think Russia no longer has the right to exist,” she told the Times. “Even before, there were doubts about how the country is united, by what values it is united and where it is going. But now I think that is no longer an issue.”
Alyokhina has been arrested several times over the past decade for her performances with the feminist group Pussy Riot.
The group became internationally known in 2012 when it performed an anti-Putin protest anthem criticizing the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church inside a Moscow cathedral. The women, dressed in balaclava masks that hid their faces, chanted: “Mother Mary, please push Putin away.”
Alyokhina and two other female members of the group were found guilty of “hooliganism” for the performance and sentenced to two years in prison. She was released two months before the end of her sentence, but has been arrested and sent to prison six times since last summer for her activism, the New York Times reported.
Another Pussy Riot member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was also jailed for nearly two years, was added last year to a list of Russian “foreign agents” which requires those listed to follow “strict financial reporting requirements” and add a disclaimer to anything they post that identifies them as foreign agents, the CNN in season.
Alyokhina told the Times she hopes to return to Russia, but for now she is in Iceland, where she is organizing pro-Ukraine events featuring Icelandic artists like Björk.
Source: CNN Brasil

I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.