Members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been released from prison under that country’s amnesty.  But if authorities were expecting Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to be apologetic and grateful, they were sorely mistaken. 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova dismissed the amnesty law that set her free as a “cosmetic measure”, a cynical attempt to buy better publicity for Putin’s Russia in the weeks before the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.  She immediately called on foreign countries to boycott the games taking place in Russia’s Black Sea resort town Sochi. Tolokonnikova’s prison term had been particularly rough, having been sent to Siberia as punishment for complaining about the conditions of Russia’s prisons.

“I saw the state from within, I saw this totalitarian machine as it is,” said Tolokonnikova, adding, “Russia is built on the model of a penal colony.”

Maria Alyokhina is every bit as defiant. 

“Hold on to your seat belts, everything is just starting,” she said, after revealing that she planned to work with an NGO to help other political prisoners in Russia.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were jailed for their “Punk Prayer” protest at a Moscow cathedral in which they criticized the Orthodox Church and called on the Virgin Mary to “put Putin away”.