Russia’s prime minister said on Friday the women in the Pussy Riot punk band serving two-year prison sentences should be set free, while a band member’s husband tried to visit his wife in jail in a central Russian region known for its gloomy Stalinist-era gulags.
Three members of the band were convicted on hooliganism charges in August for performing a “punk prayer” at Moscow’s main cathedral during which they pleaded with the Virgin Mary for deliverance from President Vladimir Putin.
One of them, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on appeal last month, but the other two, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, were sent to prison camps to serve their sentences.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that he detested the Pussy Riot act, but added the women have been in prison long enough and should be released. He made a similar statement before October’s appeal hearings, fuelling speculation about their possible release. Medvedev’s latest comment is unlikely to take effect, since he is widely seen as a liberal yet nominal government figure whose pledges and orders are seldom followed through on.
Also Friday, Tolokonnikova’s husband, Pyotr Verzilov, was turned away by authorities when he tried to visit her at a prison camp in the village of Partsa in Mordovia, a region well known in Russia for the Gulag camps here filled with the tens of thousands in the 1930s.
He had brought paperwork regarding the ongoing legal drama of the Pussy Riot trial, which should have enabled him to meet his wife on prison grounds. But he was told that she remains in quarantine for several more days.