Maria Alekhina, a jailed member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, who was found guilty of hooliganism after a performance critical of President Vladimir Putin, poses for a photo in the Committee against Torture as she has been released from prison in Nizhny Novgorod, on Monday, Dec. 23, 2013. Alekhina, and two other band members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in prison for the performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in March 2012. Samutsevich was released several months later on suspended sentence. (AP Photo/The Committee against Torture) MANDATORY CREDIT
(By AFP-Agence France Presse, 5/11/22; via Drudge Report.)
Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has left Russia, she said in an interview, after disguising herself as a food delivery courier to escape police.
Alyokhina joins thousands of Russians who have fled their country since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24.
In September, Alyokhina was sentenced to one year restricted movement while protesting in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, but in April authorities moved to convert her sentence into real jail time.
In an interview with the New York Times late on Tuesday, Alyokhina, 33, described how she dressed up as a food courier to avoid the Moscow police that were staking her out and left her cellphone behind so she couldn’t be tracked.
Then a friend drove her to the border with neighbouring Belarus and a week later she managed to cross into EU member Lithuania after several attempts, according to the interview.
“I was happy that I made it, because it was an unpredictable and big ‘kiss-off’ to the Russian authorities,” she told NYT.
