Pussy Riot's Next Fight

Russia's most famous political prisoners are free. Here's what they are planning next

Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for TIME

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, and Maria Alyokhina, 25, walk in downtown Moscow after serving more than 21 months of a two-year prison term for performing a profanity-laced "punk prayer" protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

If the government of vladimir Putin was counting on a spell behind bars to change Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, it could hardly have anticipated the manner of their transformation. Most Russian political prisoners are never heard from again, but the jailing of the two members of the punk-protest group Pussy Riot had the opposite effect. It made them internationally famous--Paul McCartney and Madonna sent messages of solidarity, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel name-checked them in a conversation with the Russian President--and vastly amplified their anti-Putin message. That fame ensured Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina's release by Putin as part of a prisoner...

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