Five members of the punk art collective Pussy Riot have been sentenced to prison in absentia by a Moscow court, per the Art Newspaper.
Maria (Masha) Alekhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot, Alina Petrova, and Taso Pletner were sentenced to periods ranging from 8 to 13 years for “spreading knowingly false information containing data about the deployment of the Russian Armed Forces,” according to the court.
The case centers the collective’s 2022 antiwar video that opens with the phrase, “the howls of Mariupol,” as well as their prior anti-Putin actions. In 2022 Russia invaded and then annexed the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
“I stand by every single word and my anti-war stance is clear,” Burkot said in a statement. “The paradox is that rapists and murderers in Russia get three to four years … Meanwhile, activists receive monstrous sentences for their opinions.” The news was first reported by the Russian state-owned news agency Tass.
The UN Human Rights Office reported as of this past July, at least 13,883 civilian deaths in Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion.
According to a report published in June 2025 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, more than 13,300 civilians had been killed and some 31,700 injured since February 2022. Human Rights Watch has estimated 10,284 people were killed in Mariupol, with the acknowledgment that exact figures of Ukrainian deaths are difficult to determine at this time, given the ongoing Russian occupation of the city, as well as its depth of devastation.
The siege of Mariupol did not spare its cultural venues: Russian troops stole more than 2,000 artworks from three local museums, including the Kuindzhi Art Museum, the Mariupol City Council said in 2022.
