'Ukraine must win': Five members of Pussy Riot sentenced to jail in Russia
Five members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot have been sentenced in absentia to prison in Russia. One member, Diana Burkot, said: “Ukraine must win, and Putin must face trial in The Hague.”
Five members of Pussy Riot have been sentenced in absentia to prison in Russia on charges relating to anti-war performances criticising the war in Ukraine.
Reports from Mediazona – the independent Russian outlet co-founded by band members in the feminist punk collective – reveal the members sentenced included Maria Alyokhina, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, Alina Petrova and Diana Burkot.
The jail terms handed down by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ranged from eight to 13 years, according to Rolling Stone and Mediazona.
The members are accused of spreading “false information” about the Russian army in a music video released in December 2022 entitled 'Mama, Don’t Watch TV'. A separate charge relates to an incident in which a member of the group urinated on a portrait of Vladimir Putin in April 2024.
All five members of Pussy Riot have rejected the charges, saying they were politically motivated.
In a statement given to Rolling Stone, Diana Burkot said: “The full-scale war against Ukraine has been going on for more than three years. And I continue to believe: Ukraine must win, and Putin must face trial in The Hague.”
Burkot added: “The Russian government is a textbook example of patriarchy – the worst kind of abuser: a tyrant, a narcissist, a gaslighter, a toxic manipulator who lives off the destruction of others’ will.”
She urged “every person in this world to use their voice,” and went on to say that collective activism was the only way to “resist and overcome the crisis of democracy”. Burkot said that thankfully, the Russian government has “no access to my physical body,” but that “even if I were in Russia, I would say the same thing: go fuck yourself.”
Pussy Riot rose to fame in 2012 with their protest piece ‘A Punk Prayer’, when three members of the group were imprisoned for a protest at a cathedral in Moscow.
Since then, the group has consistently opposed Putin’s authoritarian regime and its clampdown on freedom of speech.
In 2023, member Nadya Tolokonnikova was arrested in absentia and added to Russia’s International Wanted list. Last year, a court in Moscow sentenced Pyotr Verzilov - the unofficial spokesperson of Pussy Riot who left Russia in 2020 after authorities searched his home - to eight years and four months in absentia in prison for social media posts criticising the war in Ukraine.
Russian disinformation falsely claims
Coalition of the Willing plans to 'occupy'
Ukraine
Copyright Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved.
By Mared Gwyn Jones
Published on 15/09/2025 - EURONEWS
Pro-Kremlin actors are using disinformation to take aim at Western efforts to facilitate a peace settlement for Ukraine.
A Kremlin-aligned disinformation operation is falsely accusing Ukraine's allies of plotting to divide the war-torn country's territory between them in the event of a peace deal with Russia.
The claims — which Euronews' verification and fact-checking team detected on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and X — are purportedly based on a disclosure of confidential French military documents by prominent Russian hacking group Killnet.
The disinformation claims that those leaked documents reveal a secret plan to divide the territory and natural resources of Ukraine between four allies — France, the UK, Poland and Romania — and to deploy as many as 50,000 peacekeeping troops.
A map allegedly detailing the plan to "divide Ukraine into zones of influence" is also circulating.
But a closer look at the map shows several grammatical and spelling errors which, according to a new French government X account which debunks false claims, demonstrate that the map is not the work of the French military.
For example, Belarus is incorrectly translated into French as "Biélarus" rather than "Biélorussie".
The name of former French General Thierry Burkhard is also misspelt.
French debunkers have also pointed out that the title of the map omits the French article 'la', which they say is a mistake typically made by Russian native speakers.
The map also shows Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, as an integral part of Russia's territory, while France and Western allies consider the territory to be a Ukrainian territory under Russia control.
Despite these errors exposing the map as disinformation, EuroVerify detected the map and accompanying false claims on several Kremlin-aligned media outlets.
The same claims have also been re-hashed into an AI-generated video resembling a news report.
According to open source intelligence experts, the map was first shared on Telegram account Mash on 9 September.
Mash is a Russian media known for being close to the Kremlin and one of the most popular Russian-language channels on the platform.
It's known for spreading false information aimed at undermining Ukraine and its allies. It's believed to be behind previous false allegations that Kyiv was selling the organs of deceased soldiers on the black market, as well as unfounded claims Ukraine had lost as many as 1.7 million armed forces, previously debunked by Euroverify.
While so-called community notes contradicting the false claims have now been added to certain posts on X, the claims are still circulating without corrections on other platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
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| https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-arshinov-history-of-the-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921 |
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