Week-ending 23 July 2021
On 22 July 2021 the authorities jailed Pussy Riot member Rita Flores for 15 days on charges of disobeying police. This week two other members of the group – Veronika NIkulshina and Aleksandr Sofeyev, announced they had left Russia.
Sources:
The Moscow Times, 22 July 2021: Russian authorities on Thursday jailed Pussy Riot member Rita Flores for 15 days on charges of disobeying police, an arrest the group said was for “no damn reason.” Flores’ arrest is the most recent in a growing string of detentions, self-imposed exiles and jail sentences against members of the collective in 2021.
RFE/RL, 18 July 2021: Veronika Nikulshina, a member of the Pussy Riot performance-art collective, has left Russia after being released from custody following her second arrest in less than a month. Nikulshina told Dozhd television that she left because of the ongoing state “persecution” of Pussy Riot members and her repeated arrests for failure to obey police officers.
RFE/RL, 20 July 2021: Aleksandr Sofeyev, a member of the Pussy Riot performance-art collective, has left Russia after being released from custody following his second arrest in less than a month. Sofeyev told Open Media before boarding a plane on July 19 that he had decided to leave the country because of the ongoing state “persecution” of Pussy Riot members. A day earlier, another Pussy Riot member, Nika Nikulshina, said she left Russia right after she was released from jail after serving a 15-day sentence for allegedly disobeying police.
The Moscow Times, 20 July 2021: A growing number of Kremlin critics have fled Russia in recent weeks, citing fears of prosecution in the wake of nationwide protests in support of jailed Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny and ahead of high-stakes parliamentary elections. While many of those who have left are allies of Navalny, others are longtime opposition politicians or intellectuals not affiliated with Navalny’s work.
