Criminal case on ‘offending feelings of believers’ opened in Russia against Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova 

Moscow’s Investigative Committee has initiated a criminal case on offending feelings of believers against one of the founders of Pussy Riot Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, human rights defender Pavel Chikov reports.

The basis for the initiation of the case were social media posts — it is not specified which ones.

A series of searches was conducted within the framework of the criminal case. 

Currently, Tolokonnikova lives in the US. In 2021, Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Ekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced for a protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Tolokonnikova served one year and ten months in penal colonies of Mordovia and the Krasnodar region; in December 2013, she was released under an amnesty. 

In February, the flat of Pussy Riot member Rita Flores (Margarita Konovalova) was searched. According to her lawyer Daniil Bergman, during the search police officers took her phone and sent a fake text from her name about her having been taken to a police station.

On 8 February, Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency reported that a criminal case had been opened against Pussy Riot member Lyusya Shteyn for “fake news” about the Russian army. According to a RIA Novosti source, Shteyn tweeted a comment on 27 March 2022. In the comment, “she published deliberately false information disguised as a credible report about the Russian Armed Forces committing war crimes”.