Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of punk agitators Pussy Riot, has been formally indicted by Russia’s Investigative Committee, accused of violating the state’s ‘foreign agent law’. She has been added to the federal wanted list, which also includes mercenaries serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and several high-profile politicians from the Baltic states.
According to documents released by Krasnoyarsk Krai Court – the highest judicial body within the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia – Tolokonnikova “repeatedly published posts in a messaging platform” without indicating that the materials were “created or distributed by a foreign agent.”
“In April and May 2024, she was twice found guilty by a court of administrative offences for violating foreign agent regulations,” the court says. “After that, while outside the Russian Federation, she continued to distribute materials in a messaging platform without labelling them as produced by a foreign agent.”
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The decision comes four months after Pussy Riot were officially classified as an extremist organisation by the Ministry of Justice in Moscow, and just days after the collective occupied the New York offices of Ubiquiti, a communications company whose equipment is reportedly being deployed by the Russian army in Ukraine.
Last month, Tolokonnikova also wrote an open letter to President Pietroangelo Buttafuoco, head of the Venice Biennale, an international cultural exhibition hosted in Venice, Italy, accusing him of welcoming Russian participation in the event but denying access to those with dissenting voices.
“Accommodating official state representation while curating ‘dissent’ risks turning the latter into a performative gesture and virtue-signalling rather than a position, ” wrote Tolokonnikova. “You claim to care about censorship, [but] Pussy Riot is so censored in Russia that we were deemed ‘an extremist organisation’ – simply visiting our website or liking images of our art is criminalised.
“I think the Russian propagandists expected to calmly walk back into the Venice Biennale without any trouble, while Pietroangelo Buttofucko held the door for them. I put my hand up and said I’m bringing trouble to them. Here we are.”
The collective, who first came to international attention after playing the ‘punk prayer’ Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Chase Putin Away during a guerrilla show at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012, are now banned from all political actions and performances in Russia.
Tolokonnikova was arrested in absentia in November 2023, while six other members of the collective – Peter Verzilov, Maria Alyokhina, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Alina Petrova – have been handed sentences in absentia.
Last July, the Russian State Duma passed a law making it illegal to search for four videos by the group. The videos, Free The Cobblestones, Kropotkin Vodka, Death To Prison Freedom To Protest, and Putin Has Pissed Himself, were originally placed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials in 2012.