"Mom, I'm a prisoner.
Don't watch TV!' is the chorus of Pussy Riot's new song.
The punk band, known for their criticism of Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his regime, have just released a new video calling out against the war Russia's army is waging against neighboring Ukraine.
The singers took the words for the chorus from a telephone conversation between a Russian soldier prisoner of war and his mother: "Don't watch TV," he says, meaning: Don't trust the propaganda that describes the war in Ukraine as a "special military operation". against "Nazis".
It's been ten years since the name of Pussy Riot became known to the world with a "punk prayer" at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
The protest action was intended to attack the sacralization of Putin's power - »Our Lady, drive out Putin!«, was the refrain of the song that the participants sang.
The action lasted 40 seconds and cost Maria Alyokhina two years of her life, spent in prison camps.
On the other hand, the action made her famous.
Pussy Riot became a brand for shrill feminist protest actions against the increasing repression in Putin's Russia, their trademark the colorful knitted hats.
A suitcase with blood running out of it
The new video combines images from Russian propaganda television and images of violence in Ukraine with footage from the band's European tour, which has been ongoing since the end of spring.
In order to be able to carry out this tour, the prominent activist Alyokhina had secretly left Russia, as she told SPIEGEL.
She was actually under house arrest with an ankle bracelet.
She received the penalty for calling for protests for the release of opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
But the central symbol of the video is a suitcase that stands on Western European streets or cafés and from which blood is running.
»Everyone can interpret the suitcase differently.
For some, it symbolizes the dirty money that's still flowing out of Russia, for others, a war that's not getting enough attention," says Olga Borisova, 27, who also appears in the video.
At the same time, he could stand for Putin's policies, which bring blood and death to Europe's streets.
Putin himself ironically calls the activists in the song "erasers" because he erased his previous terms in office with the constitutional amendments.
The clip ends with what the band's punk concerts show again and again: one of the activists pees on his portrait on an open stage.
But the criticism is also aimed at the West.
"Putin likes your indifference, the West has been supplying him with weapons for 10 years," it says, and in the credits concrete political demands follow: an oil and gas embargo, sanctions against Russian officials and oligarchs, and the creation of an international court of justice to try "Putin , to condemn the employees of the Russian state propaganda, army officers and all those responsible for the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.«
