Video: Pussy Riot whipped and beaten by Cossack militia for attempted Sochi performance

A video has emerged which shows members of punk band Pussy Riot being whipped, sprayed in the face, struck and thrown to the ground by Cossack militia after they attempted a performance under a sign advertising the Sochi Winter Olympics.

The video was posted by the Associated Press. It shows the band members don their balaclavas and gas masks, and attempt to being singing before they are swiftly attacked by the security staff.

Two members of the protest group Pussy Riot yesterday said they had already been arrested in Sochi.

In August, Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were jailed for two years for staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest at a major Moscow cathedral, with a song that mentioned the country’s persecuted LGBT citizens in a Moscow cathedral on 21 February 2012.

In the wake of the scandal caused by the Pussy Riot last year, another law was passed by the State Duma to criminalise insulting people’s religious feelings.

• Nov 29 2023

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