Maria Aliokhina first came to the attention of Russian authorities — and the world — for the first time when her punk band and performance art group Pussy Riot organized a protest against President Vladimir Putin at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in 2012.
For this act of rebellion, she was sentenced to two years in prison for “vandalism”. She remained determined to fight Putin’s repressive system, even after being arrested six more times, each for 15 days, each on trumped-up charges designed to stifle her political activism.
But in April, when Putin clamped down more heavily on any criticism of the Ukrainian War, officials announced that his effective house arrest would be converted in 21 days into a penal colony. She decided it was time to leave Russia — at least temporarily — and disguised herself as a food delivery boy to evade the police guarding a friend’s apartment where she was staying in Moscow. She left her cell phone behind as bait and to avoid being tracked.
A friend drove her to the Belarusian border, and it took her a week to get to Lithuania. At a studio in Vilnius, Aliokhina agreed to give an interview to describe a dissident’s harrowing escape from Russia from Putin.
“I was glad I got it, because it was an unpredictable and strong send-off” for Moscow officials, she says, using a less polite term. Dressed in black except for a fanny pack with a rainbow belt, she adds, “I still don’t fully understand what I did.”
Aliokhina, 33, has spent her entire adult life fighting for Russia to respect its constitution and the most basic human rights, such as freedom of expression. After being released early from prison in December 2013, she and another member of Pussy Riot founded Mediazona, an independent news agency focused on crime and punishment in the country.
She also wrote a memoir, “Riot Days”, and toured internationally with a show based on the book. Though her dream was to tour Russia, only three venues agreed to perform the show — and all faced reprisals.
Aliokhina was determined to remain in the country, despite constant surveillance and pressure from the authorities. But now she has joined the tens of thousands of Russians who have fled since the invasion of Ukraine.
The activist, called Masha by friends, had bitten her fingernails and was puffing almost nonstop on a vape electronic cigarette or Marlboro Lights. She made the trip in three-inch black platform boots without laces — a reference to her many stints in the prison, where the item is confiscated. Inmates tuck wet wipes into the eyelets of their shoes to keep them in place. As a manifesto, she and other members of Pussy Riot will use them in performances during a tour that starts this Thursday (12) in Berlin, to raise money for Ukraine.
When it started more than a decade ago, Pussy Riot seemed both a publicity stunt and political activism. But if the protest in Moscow’s cathedral — where they sang the “Punk Prayer” deriding the symbiosis that developed between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin — seemed far-fetched at the time, it now sounds prescient.
Church leader Patriarch Cyril recently blessed Russian troops heading to Ukraine, and the European Union has put his name on a list of people expected to receive sanctions.
Exactly ten years after the cathedral protest, Putin delivered an impassioned speech in which he called Ukraine a country “created by Russia”, laying the groundwork for his invasion. Aliokhina heard the speech on the radio from a prison cell. The invasion, she says, changed everything, not just for her, but for her country. “I think Russia no longer has the right to exist,” she says. “Even before, there were questions about how it’s united, what values it’s united by and where it’s going. But now I don’t think that’s a question anymore.”
During the interview, she is surrounded by other members of the group, now a collective of about a dozen members. Most had also recently fled Russia — including her girlfriend, Lucy Shtein, who had left the country a month earlier, also evading her restrictions on movement and also disguised in a delivery boy’s uniform. Her decision came after someone put a sign on the door of the apartment where she lived with Aliokhina accusing them of being traitors.
The two have already been arrested for postings on Instagram calling for the release of political prisoners in Russia. In February, Aliokhina was sentenced to 15 days in prison for “propaganda of Nazi symbolism” for another post, this one from 2015, which criticized Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko, a Putin ally. Shtein was detained at the same time on similar charges.
“They are afraid because they cannot control us,” says Aliokhina. When she arrived at the Belarus-Lithuanian border, she had a Lithuanian visa which she tried to use with Russian ID as Moscow had confiscated her passport. By this time, she had already been placed on the wanted list.
In the first attempt to cross, she was detained by Belarusian border guards for six hours before being sent back. In the second, the duty officer, in disbelief, simply sent her away. But on the third she succeeded.
Aliokhina had allies outside the country working to find a path to freedom. One was Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who persuaded a European country to issue a travel document for the Russian that essentially gave her the same status as an EU citizen — the country’s authorities asked that he not be named.
The document was smuggled into Belarus. While there, she avoided hotels or any place where she needed to show ID. Then she finally boarded a bus to Lithuania. She laughs when she tells how she was treated better by the border guards when they thought of her as a “European” rather than a Russian.
“A lot of magic happened last week,” he says. “Sounds like a spy novel.” The fact that she was able to get out of Russia and Belarus was a reflection, she said, of the chaotic Russian law enforcement. “It looks like a big demon from here, but it’s very disorganized if you look inside. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
Aliokhina says he hopes to return to Russia. But no one has any idea how this can happen, as even the most dedicated activists are imprisoned or forced into exile.
In Vilnius, her phone rang with messages of support and relief that she was safe after a week of travel. She bristles at these well-meaning expressions, which she says are misleading. “If your heart is free, it doesn’t matter where you are.”
