Week-ending 9 January 2026
‘As a member of Pussy Riot, I have been through a lot. I spent two years in a penal colony in the Urals — a modern-day gulag. I was beaten with whips, had my head smashed open and was banned from leaving the country. I spent nights detained in police stations. I was regularly followed and wiretapped. I endured a year and a half under house arrest, and six stints of 15 days each in special detention centers. I faced threats to take my child away; threats to imprison my child. Not a bad résumé to fill my new book with.
And yet I did not want to leave. I desperately did not want to. Leaving Russia meant tearing my heart out. If not for my loved ones, I would never have gotten into that car that simply drove west with an electronic ankle monitor and without a passport.
I have been living for three and a half years without a home, having moved between hundreds of hotels and dozens of apartments.
There are several million people like this — people deprived of a home and, in essence, of a country. And each of us has our own story of how we became an “extremist” or “terrorist.” A story about the moment when it became impossible to remain silent.
Each of us — or almost each of us — has relatives left inside the country: hostages. Elderly parents who do not want to leave, or brothers and sisters who have decided that the ground under their feet is more valuable than crying out the truth about the crimes of Putin, the army and the regime’s propagandists.
Criminal cases opened in Russia mean only one thing: the road back is only a road to prison. Another member of Pussy Riot, Taso, recently said that he thinks more and more about what the word “never” means. It’s frightening to think about, isn’t it? The prospect of “never returning home.” […]’
– Maria Alyokhina
– source: Maria Alyokhina, ‘Here’s What it Means to Be an ‘Extremist’ in Today’s Russia,’ The Moscow Times, 7 January 2026
You can listen to our recent Russian-language podcast with Maria Alyokhina here:
and on YouTube here:
