After more than a year in Siberian prison camps and launching a hunger strike in response to alleged human rights violations while imprisoned, today it is announced Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are to be freed from prison three months early. Their release comes as a pardon on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russian lawmakers approved an amnesty bill that would free both Pussy Riot and 30 Greenpeace activist crew members, reports the BBC.
Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina have been serving a two-year sentence following their February 2012 anti-Kremlin protest performance at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The two members were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” charges which detractors argued was censorship by the Russian government. A third member also convicted, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on probation in October 2012.
Despite allowing Pussy Riot to go free, in a statement today President Putin upheld his previous stance on their imprisonment saying, “I was not sorry that they [Pussy Riot] ended up behind bars. I was sorry that they were engaged in such disgraceful behaviour, which in my view was degrading to the dignity of women.”
The two women are expected to be free as early as today.
