Society's Child

Perennial agitators 'Pussy Riot' attacked by Cossacks at Sochi Olympics

Raw Story
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 06:58 UTC

The two best known members of Pussy Riot said they clashed with plain clothes police and Cossacks Wednesday when they tried to stage an action in the centre of Winter Olympics host city Sochi.

The scuffles came a day after members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were detained by police in Sochi for several hours on Tuesday in connection with a theft case.

Cossacks, clad in their national clothes, are often seen helping the police with their work in the south of Russia in line with a tradition dating back to Tsarist times.

Plain clothed members of the security forces used tear gas in the clashes, Tolokonnikova's husband Pyotr Verzilov wrote on Twitter.

Tolokonnikova herself wrote on her Twitter feed @tolokno that they had been attempting to stage a new performance entitled "Putin will teach you to love the motherland".

"Pussy Riot were attacked by Cossacks, hit with sticks and sprayed with pepper gas," she said.

Alyokhina posted pictures on her Twitter of her chest showing severe bruising after the clashes.

The women have since gone to Sochi hospitals for medical treatment. The centre of Sochi is some 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of the Olympic venues.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sent to penal colonies on a two year hooliganism sentence for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.

However they were freed early on amnesty in December last year.

Comment: You've got to wonder, who's funding these unemployed artists' trips to New York, Europe and Sochi?...

Reader Comments

aimarok · 2014-02-20T10:09:32Z

Question to editors

Guys, do you really think it's OK to beat and pepper spray women just because they are performing some song about Putin? What if it would be Obama or Netanyahu? Putin is not a messiah and if you think otherwise it's a wishfull thinking. Even if he had been a messiah then no punk girls' song would ever hurt him. Critics and satire are required in society of normal people. Your bias don't do any good to you. Speaking about money, girls got a lot of attention all over the world after they were sentenced. After they were freed they've just got invited. It's not always a conspiracy theory. I could be wrong but that's what I see.
Here's the video if you haven't seen it yet: _[Link]

Othello · 2014-02-20T10:20:08Z

The odd thing about this is the following; I have never heard even one single song these girl played. Ever. But the media attention is Bieber-like.

skepticle · 2014-02-20T11:35:50Z

Of course it's not okay in a vacuum, but Pussy Riot is literally asking for it by defying the laws of their country over and over.

It begs the question, why do they continue to instigate these confrontations? Why must they go to Sochi? They do it because it's a convenient way for them to use the popularity of the Olympics to make their message. They have no interest in being in Sochi to watch the Olympics live. They would never go to Sochi on any other day. They're doing it because there is international attention there. So how can they claim that there's something wrong with Putin using the Olympics for PR, then try to do exactly the same, except that Putin is athletic, probably actually likes the Olympics, goes to watch in the stands, while these girls try to sneak into town and demonstrate before they can get caught, and soft-martyr themselves.

. Sochi is an international event, just like every other Olympics. Not a single country that hosts the Olympics allows political activists to protest and cause a scene in the middle of all that. Everybody knew that demonstrations were banned in central Sochi and the Olympic park. Pussy Riot knows they're breaking the law, it's been made VERY CLEAR to them what will be tolerated. And they've been released, TWICE, and not even banned from traveling there. Yet, they continue to push and make a scene in violation of the local laws because that's what they want. I have very little sympathy for fighters in a war taking a bit of damage.

The first time they arrested two of them the other day, they probably could have held them or sent them away from the city, but they released them, probably with a hundred warnings not to demonstrate or else face real consequences. Indeed, one of their main defenses was "we weren't demonstrating". Well, what's their defense now? Because now, it looks like the FSB knew exactly what they were up to, and it seems that they just won't pass up the opportunity to use the Olympics to make their point.

It's nothing about conspiracy. Pussy Riot can take a bus for 15 minutes to get out of the center of the city and do their protest there, and they won't be whipped and pepper sprayed. Just not downtown. Not at the park or the Stadiums, not under the big Olympic banners, not in the middle of the tourists, athletes, and athletes families. They should be thankful they didn't get immediately arrested again. Because the authorities had every justification to do so the microsecond they started their demonstration.

Niall · 2014-02-20T17:32:15Z

No, it's not ok. At the time of publishing, their claims hadn't been verified. It would be nice to be able to take their word at face value, but with so much disinformation about all things Russian these days, it's actually better to begin with the assumption that if something is being said about Russia that reflects badly on it, it's a lie.

Now, let me ask you this: do you think anyone in the States would ever gain such positive mainstream media attention and public standing by trashing either sites or myths that are hallowed to Americans?

REALLY think about it now... the PATRIOT Acts, the NSA's Total Mass Surveillance, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later police policy, the total media control, the complete infiltration of all opposition, the removal of habeus corpus, the legalization of assassinating Americans (or anyone else), the no-fly lists, the 'accidental murders' or 'suicides' of some dissidents and the entrapment of others, the hundreds of thousands of drones being rolled out for patrolling the skies...

All this seems to have been completely forgotten by ostensibly liberal, freedom-loving Westerners who've been oh-so-critical of their governments, yet oh-so-easy to distract with lies about Putin's Russia.

“

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Kimster

How naive? They(Russia) think that they are on the right side ( in spite of the fact that the west has not been a force for good as well), after...

Pretender

I'd tell him to go to hell but he should be arriving long before that.

tekdude

Main Stream Politics = Social security for the elite.

Awordinyourear

Zelensky: Star spangled beggar.

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Perennial agitators 'Pussy Riot' attacked by Cossacks at Sochi Olympics

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