A Moscow court on Monday satisfied the lawsuit filed by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and declared the Russian punk group, known for its critical stance towards the president’s government, extremist.
“The Tverskoi Court in Moscow satisfied the administrative demands of the Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia to declare the punk group Pussy Riot an extremist organization and ban its activities on Russian territory,” the press service of the capital’s courts said on Telegram.
Thus, the Russian Justice takes another step in the legal persecution of this group, which achieved international fame after a performance carried out in 2012 against the president of Russia, Putin, from Moscow, which cost its members sentences of up to two years in prison, accused of vandalism.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, the founder of the group, who is in the US and whose arrest Russian authorities are seeking, last month downplayed the decision to designate the group as extremist. “If telling the truth is extremism, then we are happy to be extremists,” he wrote on X.
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Last September, a Russian court sentenced five members of this feminist group to between 8 and 13 years in prison in absentia for spreading “false information” about the Russian Army.
The longest sentence, 13 years and 15 days, was received by María Aliókhina, one of the best-known faces of the Russian collective and its co-founder. Aliókhina was already on the search and capture list in Russia since April 2022.
Pussy Riot is a prominent Russian feminist protest art collective that has been actively and publicly fighting against Putin and since 2011. Their protests use punk rock and performance art to criticize Russian leadership, human rights abuses, and the war in Ukraine.
The group continues its activism from exile, while its members face frequent arrests and severe legal sanctions in Russia for their opposition. In 2021, the Russian government declared Tolokonnikova a “foreign agent.” In late 2023, a Moscow court ordered his arrest in absentia. In 2024 and 2025, several other members were sentenced in absentia to long prison terms (eight to 13 years) related to protests against the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Committed against war
Following the invasion, in February 2022, Pussy Riot focused its efforts on activism against the war, raising funds for Ukraine and supporting Russian political prisoners through initiatives such as its “Days of Unrest” tours. Tolokonnikova even co-founded the independent media outlet which covers prison and judicial matters in Russia and has gained enormous weight in military information in these almost four years of war.
Their decade-long fight against the Russian government has also been the subject of museum exhibitions and documentaries, cementing their role as global icons of resistance. All their actions usually have strong symbolism, such as performance from 2022 Putin’s asheswhere they burned a 3×3 meter portrait of Putin and performed a ritual to scare him away. Their fight highlights the , where people can face long prison sentences for speaking out against the government or its military actions.
