She disguised herself as a food delivery girl to avoid the Moscow police, who had her under house arrest, and left Russia.
Maria Aliójina —better known as Masha— picks up the phone somewhere in Iceland to talk to EL PAÍS through Telegram, the most encrypted network.
Alyokhina, a member of the Pussy Riot collective, the punk band that has challenged the government of Vladimir Putin since 2011, fears that the Russian authorities will locate her.
“I was arrested three days after the war with Ukraine started.
I was in a labor camp again.
When I was released, my friends had either left Russia or were in jail.
Everything is always this complicated and stupid here,” she says.
She takes a sip of a drink and continues.
“My passport has been taken away.
I am here thanks to the solidarity of other artists who have helped me escape from Russia.
The Pussy Riot exist for that solidarity, with which we will build something stronger than weapons, ”he adds.
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The woman who lost her fear
For Alyokhina (Moscow, 33 years old) nothing has been what it was since that August 17, 2012 when the Pussy Riot burst into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow dressed in colorful balaclavas to ask the Mother of God to rid the world of Putin.
The performance, which ended up becoming a
punk performance
and the most effective act of activism against the Russian government to date, bothered Putin and also, he says, the West, "which continued to sell weapons to Russia, and buy gas, without to wonder what was happening with the human rights of the Russians”, he sentences.
“Suddenly, with Ukraine, it is as if they have opened their eyes.
And they are doing things.
The most effective is the embargo on gas, and on the properties of oligarchs.
There they should be more severe, ”she points out.
After that performance in 2012, she was sentenced to two years in prison for vandalism, her longest sentence, and released in December 2013. Alyokhina describes her time in prison as a gulag in which she did forced labor “for 12 hours up to date".
She would later be arrested numerous times for her activism.
In April, after protesting against the Kremlin's crackdown on Ukraine, a court replaced her house arrest with 21 days in a prison facility.
I'm losing the signal.
Do you think they are listening to you?
"I don't know and I don't care.
Putin does not scare me.
He is nobody.
He is just a guy who has held the presidency in Russia and has built a totalitarian state pretending to be a new Stalin fighting the Nazis.
He is not dangerous.
The things he has are dangerous.
Atomic bombs, missiles.
But he is nobody.
He has done nothing but ruin the country.
In 22 years, he has not built anything.
And the rest of the world knows it.
And if you spend enough time in Russia and see how it works from the inside, you realize that there is nothing more stupid.
That's why you're not afraid of him.
Nobody is afraid anymore, it's ridiculous, ”he replies.
What is scary is what is happening in the Ukraine, he adds.
That's why Pussy Riot have taken the risk of going on tour.
Maria Alyokhina, detained by Russian police in July 2019 during a demonstration calling for independent candidates to run in local elections.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV (AFP)
Alókhina has spent an odyssey of more than a week in which she secretly crossed Belarus until she reached Lithuania.
Before her flight, she was waiting to serve one of her innumerable sentences for her activism against the Government, this time 21 days in a prison,
Javier G. Cuesta reports from Moscow.
As he told
The New York Times,
Belarusian guards held her for six hours on her first attempt to cross the border before returning her to Russia.
The third succeeded, and within the country they gave him a travel document that was provided by a European country thanks to the mediation of the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson.
The show he is presenting,
Riot Days,
will arrive in Spain in June (Barcelona on June 1, Zaragoza on June 2 and Madrid on June 4).
Ticket prices will be decided by each attendee.
The idea is to continue “opening its eyes” to the world about what Putin, “that sick maniac”, is doing in Russia and Ukraine.
“He is losing more than he thought he could lose.
But since he is a maniac he is unpredictable.
And that is why this new Cold War is so dangerous.
It is much more serious and dangerous than the first.
Because Putin is crazy,” he says.
The show is a theatrical adaptation of
Riot Days,
the book in which Alyokhina denounced the mistreatment of women in Russian prisons.
“What is happening with feminism all over the world is brutal, except in Russia.
Russia is dystopian.
It doesn't even have a law against sexist violence.
If I punch you in the street, I'm sure I'll end up in jail.
But if your husband hits you at home, they will fine him 50 euros and that's it.
And if they rape you, it will be your fault for dressing as you did.
Feminism, even as a word, is an enemy of the state in Russia.
It is associated with the West, and Evil”, she points out.
Since arriving in Iceland, Alyokhina has continued her activism, demonstrating in front of the Russian consulate in Reykjavik and using the artists' solidarity structure to welcome other people who want to leave Russia.
She presents this experience as a stop, because her goal is to return to Russia and continue fighting Putin from the combative art.
