Status: 11.05.2022 4:32 p.m
She was threatened with transfer to a prison camp – but before that could happen, the artist Maria Alyokhina fled Russia. She herself recalls how she managed to do this in a “spy novel”.
Despite police surveillance, the artist and activist Maria Alyokhina, a member of the Kremlin-critical punk band “Pussy Riot”, managed to escape from Russia. With the help of friends, the 33-year-old reached Lithuania via Belarus, as the artist told the New York Times (“NYT”) in an interview in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
In order to escape from her monitors in Moscow, she disguised herself as a food delivery woman. Pictures published by “NYT” show her and a friend trying on green courier uniforms in Moscow. In addition, Ajokhina reported that she had left her mobile phone in a friend’s apartment – so as not to be located and to distract the police.
“I still don’t fully understand what I did,” the artist told the newspaper. But she is glad she made it. “When your heart is free, it doesn’t matter where you are,” she said in the interview. “A lot of magic” happened last week – “it sounds like a spy novel”.
Spectacular protest
Alyokhina was sentenced to two years in a prison camp with her bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in 2012. She protested against the then Prime Minister and current President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. At the end of 2013 they were pardoned and released. In the years that followed, she continued to campaign for respect for human rights in her country. Among other things, she founded the independent media project “Mediazona” together with Tolokonnikova and continued to perform with “Pussy Riot”.
Recently, however, Alyokhina has repeatedly come into conflict with the Russian judiciary. Since last summer alone, she has been sentenced to shorter prison terms 15 times. She has been under partial house arrest for a year since September for calling for demonstrations for the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny. She was not allowed to leave her apartment at night.
This “punk prayer” by Pussy Riot in Moscow Cathedral in February 2012 enraged the church and the state leadership – and led to prison sentences.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
Escape the prison camp
The artist now said that her decision to leave Russia was made in April, when Putin began to crack down on criticism of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The authorities had announced that Alekhina’s house arrest at the time would be converted into a 21-day prison camp. Unknown persons also daubed the door of her apartment in Moscow and denounced her as a “traitor”. Her friend Lucy Schtejn then left Russia a month ago – also disguised as a food delivery woman.
Alyokhina further reported to the “NYT” that she had been taken by an acquaintance to the border with Belarus in a car. In the neighboring country, she avoided hotels and other places where she would have had to identify herself.
When she first tried to cross the border with a Lithuanian visa and her Russian ID, she was turned away twice by Belarusian border guards because she didn’t have a passport. The Russian authorities had confiscated her international passport, and she was already on a wanted list at the time.
A third attempt with another document was then successful. An artist friend from Iceland persuaded an unnamed European country to issue the 33-year-old with a travel document that gave her status similar to that of an EU citizen. This document was smuggled into Belarus and she was able to board a bus to Lithuania.
Maria Alyokhina has been committed to Ukraine for years. Now she saw no possibility for herself to be active in Russia.
Image: dpa
mockery of the authorities
The fact that she managed to escape is also shown by the chaos of the Russian law enforcement agencies, the artist told the New York Times. “It looks like a giant demon from here, but it’s very disorganized from the inside. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
Despite everything, she hopes to be able to return to Russia at some point. Other members of the band are said to have left Russia in the meantime – including a friend of Alyokhina, with whom she shared an apartment. She also disguised herself as a food delivery person.
The band is now rehearsing in Vilnius and Iceland for their forthcoming European tour to raise money for Ukraine. A concert is planned for this Thursday in Berlin, at which Alyokhina will also be there, said a spokeswoman for the XJazz festival.