A member of Russian punk group Pussy Riot emerged from hiding yesterday to say the band is still defiant and wants President Vladimir Putin overthrown.
“I’m here to say you shouldn’t give up,” a band member, identified only as “Kot,” said on “60 Minutes” last night. “What happened to us is unacceptable.”
Kot — who hid her face with a pink balaclava — went underground with another bandmate after three other members of Pussy Riot were arrested last March for “hooliganism.” The band was busted for singing and dancing at the altar of Moscow’s oldest Orthodox cathedral in protest after the church backed Putin in the last election.
“The elections weren’t legitimate,” said another Pussy Riot member, Katya Samutsevich, who was jailed but recently released. “There was vote rigging, there was false counting. It was clear the president put himself in power.”
Two band members are still locked up in remote Russian penal colonies.
“Just because there was a court case doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop and shut our mouths,” Samutsevich vowed.
Putin spokesman Sergei Markov admitted the women got a harsher penalty than they deserved — and that it has damaged Russia’s reputation abroad.
“We [don’t] like such an awful image of Russia because it creates problems for us,” he said. “It stops investments to [the] Russian economy.”