Lawyer describes Alyokhina’s plan
Pussy Riot activist flees Russia
05/11/2022, 12:19 am
After a protest against President Putin, Maria Alyokhina was sentenced to two years in a prison camp in 2012. Long after that, she continued to be under police surveillance. Despite this, she manages to escape from Russia, says her lawyer – and even explains how she did it.
According to her lawyer, the activist of the punk band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, has left Russia via an unknown route despite police surveillance. Alyokhina is no longer on Russian territory, said her lawyer Daniil Berman, according to the Interfax agency. According to unconfirmed reports, she is said to have left her place of residence in a courier service uniform.
The “New York Times” reported that Alyokhina is now in Vilnius. An acquaintance brought her to the border with Belarus in a car and then reached Lithuania after about a week. No further details about the course of the escape were given.
“I’m glad I made it,” she was quoted as saying. Among other things, according to the US newspaper, she left her mobile phone to avoid being located and at the same time to present the Russian authorities with an unchanged whereabouts. “I still don’t quite understand how I did it,” she continues. According to the report, she is staying in a small apartment in Vilnius.
Alyokhina has repeatedly come into conflict with the Russian judiciary. In connection with calls for demonstrations for the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, she was sentenced to one year of imprisonment in September last year. She was not allowed to leave her apartment at night. Since the beginning of the year, she has been picked up several times by the security authorities on various allegations. The aim behind it can be assumed that their political activism should be prevented or at least weakened. In 2021, Alyokhina and her bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were sentenced to two years in a prison camp. She had protested against President Vladimir Putin in a church.