Masha Alyokhina is on the run from Putin

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0:30The New Statesman.

0:36In February 2012, five women dressed in colourful balaclavas walked into Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and performed what they called Punk Prayer. A 40-second protest calling on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Vladimir Putin. One of them was Masha Alyokina, a founding member of the artist collective Pussy Riot. Within weeks, she was arrested and charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in a penal colony. The trial became a global flashpoint, a contestation of free speech in Putin's Russia. But as the Kremlin tightened its grip in the years that followed, Alyokina refused to disappear.

1:19Since her release, she's faced repeated arrests and constant surveillance. In 2022, while under house arrest, she escaped dressed as a food courier. Now living in exile and moving from one European city to another, she continues her activism, turning her focus to Russia's war in Ukraine. I'm Oli Dugmore and this is The Exchange. Masha Al-Yokina joins me in this episode to discuss Putin's Russia, protest and prison, and what it means to lead a life in exile.

1:55Hello, Masha. Hi. How are you? I'm fine. Good to see you. I'm very pleased to be speaking to you, to be interviewing you today. Your book, Political Girl, talks a lot about Russia, about your life. And one of the sort of extraordinary things that really has sort of landed with me about your story is the way that you actually most recently left Russia. Could you tell me about how you escaped? What happened? So I was under a criminal case with Electronic Anki and the apartment where I've been was surrounded by political police. There were three cars near the front door and back door and sometimes they were knocking to the door of an apartment.

2:42So to exit the apartment I had to dress myself as a food delivery courier and there are thousands of them around Moscow. so you are not recognized as, you know, you are not recognized because it's a lot of them. And leave the phone, change, like to do some preparation to exit the apartment and it became kind of a loud story. But the book shows, and I can speak more about this, that it wasn't just, you know, fun, fuck the police thing. I desperately didn't want to leave my country and I dedicated a lot to show the difference, to show that Russia is not only Kremlin's assholes but also us and I desperately didn't want to forever leave my country.

3:40And the last chapter describes it quite, I hope, properly. There was not one attempt, there was three attempts to cross the border and after the first two I still wasn't sure that I won that.

4:03So there was an amazing week in the country of Belarus which is under dictatorship for 30 years which is used by Putin as a polygon for training soldiers which is the only country in Europe, which still have death penalty and use it. Yeah, like that. Escape. You had a, in your answer there, you said the word leave, leave forever. Do you think you've left forever? Is there a world in which you could ever go back to Russia? After receiving the sentence, I started to think what is leaving and what is staying actually, because politically they still like aware and persecuted us politically. We exist there by their documents.

4:51Physically, we do not exist there. We, I, I do not, I'm not physically in the country and I know many people who are physically in the country, but they are not able to be politically there. They are not able to speak, to write, to express themselves how they want, because it will cost like real 13, like 20 years of prison during the war. This is different. I mean, during the war they can, and they do everything they want. They killed Navalny. After murder of Navalny, any political prisoner can be killed any moment. Nobody is protected. There is zero, let's say, publicity which can protect you now since Navalny has been murdered.

5:45So politically, these people are self-censored and censored. And they, like, it's a big question. Do they exist there or not? And it's a huge trauma for, I think, at least three generations. because we see through the Soviet Union experience when generation by generation people were giving to their children this feeling and understanding that you are like, no one, be in the corner, be silent, just protect yourself. You will not make a big change with your riot. They will just kill you. 5.5 million people been killed. memory of them erased organizations who were keeping this memory named foreign agent and unwanted executioners in glory so this is repeating but in most in more like cynical way i think because this system is not a true believers at least in soviet union they were true believers for this communist future.

6:58Marxist-Leninist theory, this don't believe at anything except money. What was it like growing up in Moscow in the 1990s then? People talk about the moment the war comes down in 1989. Everyone thinks David Hasselhoff's going to turn up in their country and bring them democracy, right? And it gets talked about as the Velvet Revolution, that there's been this wholesale change, right? But it doesn't necessarily have to be violent. What was Moscow like in the 1990s after that moment? My mum raised me alone, so I did not know my father until I was 20. I'm not from dissident family, so the political, let's call them, events which were happening that time, for example, two Chechen wars, nobody talked with me about that.

7:51I didn't know a lot about what is going on in the country. Once I was driving subway and we have this gap when the train goes, you know, not in the tunnel, but you can see on the windows what is going on. And the building of Russian parliament, the White House, was black. I just seen like the building, which was white all the time, the black. But I didn't know what happened. I didn't know about any tanks, about like what Yeltsin is doing, nothing. Zero information. So step by step, I, but I was like curious. I was like asking questions in the lessons, which people like other kids were not asking and I didn't want someone to prepare a career, you know, as a cake for me.

8:52I wanted to explore life myself. So I think that led me to kind of provoke me to, you know, read about this and that and watch a lot of movies. and through movies I think I felt Western culture more and also through music. We were talking just before we started recording about these convictions in absentia, you know, this 13-year sentence that you've been given, other people also sentenced, and indeed now the sort of political persecution of people that are connected to you. If you don't come from a dissident family, it must be possibly quite hard for other people that are still in Russia to sort of understand maybe why you've done what you've done.

9:47I don't want to put words in your mouth. Has it created like a pressure or a tension for you, the fact that you're not there but some of those people still are? Everyone who, like our criminal case, five members, and they opened the case because of the song, and I was song Mama Don't Watch TV, which we recorded after everyone crossed the border in the summer of 2022 and anti-war performance which we did in munich museum pinnacotheca like if you ask how it is for people who are in the country to see us having this ability to make performances this is a question right differently. I think, well, Mama, I felt only after the full-scale invasion that she fully understood what I was doing for 10 years.

10:43Because before there were debates. Not a lot of debates because like I was quite, you know, a troublemaker from childhood. But there were debates. There were debates about the church. There were debates about FSB. There were debates about different demonstrations where I went to and should I or should not, and what is more important for me. But after Putin started to bomb Kiev, everything changed. She understood. Well, and my father, he died this summer, a month after this surge, And I think the last thing he said to me that, like, I'm proud of you. You managed to fuck them even from there. Don't know.

11:38Will I see you or not? And, yeah, I...

11:51We have an ability to speak. They have an ability to stand on the motherland's land. This is kind of like this.

12:01You have both abilities. Yeah, I do.

12:09One of the actions that you undertook is what sort of led to you rising to international prominence, your punk prayer in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. And up until that point, you'd been anonymous. What was it like in that moment to take the mask off, to lose your anonymity? We should write being anonymous collective. We did not show faces and didn't use the real names. And we didn't expect a criminal case. We've been first artists, activists who've been persecuted by the state. There was zero precedent. They were killing journalists, imprisoned Khodorkovsky, but zero artists been imprisoned.

12:59So it surprised you then? Of course surprised. I mean, I was the only person who was in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, only member whose real documents police had. Because in the Red Square, all the fake names worked, and we were giving fake names, and mine did not. So I had to give my real passport with real address. So after Punk Prayer, they came to the stairs. I was, like, going back to home from kindergarten with my son. we went to elevator got to the floor and there was a guy in plain clothes saying that he is a police and I should go with him and I was like it took me like a lot to pretend that I don't know anything about any like church actions like I'm just you know I need to go home

14:07and then I started to call like everyone we should like do something there is a police in my stairs so we went in the night i went to this meeting of all of the members we started to discuss what to do we decided to send the lawyer next day because i promised that i will come next day we sent the lawyer at the same time i went back home put some things to the backpack said my to my son that i will come back tomorrow and I actually came back after two years because the lawyer said that it's a criminal case from two to seven years of prison and it's not turning back. If they open, they don't close.

14:56There were people who said that we should run away from the country. There was a week before the election day. There was a hope and there was like a pure desire that like why we should run everything will be like fine and they caught us near the subway after a week

15:22well names appeared in the news faces appeared in the news everything appeared in the news and physically i've been sent like for first 48 hours to Petrovka 38 prison all the historical building with an atmosphere and prison world said hello to me with the procedure of search when they put you to the cage say that you should take off your all of your clothes like including underwear and squat and then bend over and show what is like inside your ass to check like any mobile from there yeah no words about like what you have right to do what your like responsibilities are nothing you explore everything yourself and next day the policeman in plainclothes came to me and said that if i will not sign the paper that i'm guilty and apologize uh it will be two years minimum.

16:34And I think it would be more if international attention will not appear.

16:44We're going to take a quick break now, but stay with us.

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17:37Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

17:54What is it like being in a penal colony in eastern Russia for two years? Russian prison system, legacy of Soviet Union prison system, you know it. We don't have buildings with cells to serve the term. During pretrial and trial investigation, you are in the building with cells, you are in the cell, in the walking yard for an hour, After, and you're not allowed, they put pressure on you that you are not allowed to call your relatives during this period. They try to kind of break you by canceling all the connection with, I don't know, relatives. Then, after you receive sentence, they send you to penal colony.

18:45And penal colony is not the building with cells. It's a number of barracks, number of buildings where 100 people sleep together in one room, having two toilets without walls in between them. No hot water, no normal food, no normal medicine, one fridge. A big attraction for hungry women. Your belongings should be packed into one paper box, like the size of the box for TV, for example, even smaller. And this number of barracks is a living zone. Also there is a working zone and a fence in between them. Working zone is a fabric where prisoners should sew the police uniform and uniform for Russian army, six days a week, 12 hours per day, two pounds per month in rubbles.

19:52These are the conditions. You are not, officially you are able to write any claims about the conditions, but if you would do that like you're a revolutioner you are dangerous you will disorganize an order of our penal colony and its criminal article up to three years so i went to human rights commission and i said that the clothes are not warm enough for women to stand on the place for 40 minutes they logged me to solitary confinement for four months started to write reports that i'm violating regime disorganizing their penal colony we started to fight in the court with my lawyer against them somehow we've won commissions start to come from moscow and check this penal colony what's the mess is going on people been fired colony suffered yeah something happened so they transported me to another penal colony, they asked permission from Moscow to like get out I ended up in the penal colony number 2 similar in the end of 2013 in the end of December Putin wrote this act of amnesty because Western politicians were asking what's going on?

21:26Why you have this young mother's political prisoners before the Sochi Olympics and how we can go to your country to participate Olympic Games if you have political prisoners. That time Putin was playing the game that we are democracy. we don't have political prisoners so we they were trying to save their face in the front of the west they were like playing with you so he wrote this act of amnesty for young mothers across Russia

22:04because he didn't want to write that this is act of amnesty of Bush riot and the hypocrisy is that they released five young mothers from all the Russia, two of us and three of us, two months before the end of the term. And we decided to go to this Olympic Games to make an action, to use the time. And that's like how, like, I started to understand that country changed in two years. It was a bit invisible from penal colony. A number of repressing laws, other political prisoners, losing the hope. People started to lose the hope for change.

22:54Two weeks after Winter Olympics, where we've been beaten, Putin annexed Crimea. started several weeks more after he invaded eastern regions of Ukraine, saying that we're not doing that. And the world accepted that. No proper sanctions, shaking hands,

23:23just acceptation, green light, do more. inside the country that period 2014 which i mentioned before they started to use the language of cold war inside the country they also start to use the violence physical violence against the fifth colon and enemies of the people so we've been beaten more by the groups of young guys who were controlled by political police. So attacks have been organized by police. I appreciate you talking about it. You described Putin's annexation of Crimea as the point of no return. And you were talking about it then. Do you think if there had been stronger remonstrations or a stronger response from the West that something different might have happened?

24:18that we might not be in the situation we find ourselves in now? Of course. Yeah, I think so. I mean, we can... So here next Crimea, by putting this fake referendum on board, the world accepted that. So can you name people who've been properly sanctioned after that? There were like almost no one who was responsible. The main commander of Russian army who was there was not sanctioned, Vladimir Putin. Two months later, MH17, the airplane with citizens being shot from the earth, from the ground with a missile racket. Almost 300 people died. How long took the investigation? How long it took to name people who are responsible and to prove that it was shut down from the occupied territory by people from Russian army?

25:35Eight years. to name Gyrkin Strelkov as a responsible, the person whose units were invading Ukrainian territory first, who is imprisoned now because he's complicated. Yeah, decided to criticize the Kremlin, not appreciated. Eight years. And Putin was not named by the court as responsible. The main commander of Russian army, who was denying, like diffusing to say that Russian army even was there. Because after revolution, Ukraine was fragile after Maidan. There was no, like, parliament. And there was an after-revolution situation, so it was quite easy to scratch the country, which they were trying to do, into a part.

26:45Then we can look to what was going on inside the country. They were constantly repressing people, like beat people. and each time there was a deep concern to deep concern and deep concern

27:03and people who were responsible for that, they were fine. They were like continuing grabbing money, sending their children here, buying more and more property here and, I mean, you're from London, you know. So, I mean, if all of that, even half of that would not exist, 2022 would not happen or happen differently. The main voice against this annexation and invasion to Ukraine, Boris Nemtsov, was killed a year after near the Kremlin walls. Nothing happened. There was a statement from American president that if they will kill Navalny, there will be circumstances like no one would see where they are.

27:53I mean... It's hard to find the words for the question. It's almost why, but it's more what is it the West misunderstands or gets wrong? Because you can say, oh, you know, after Navalny, it's going to be different. After Niemsov, it's going to be different. Or in the UK, we could say after Sergei and Yulia Skripal is going to be different in the use of chemical weapons on our streets. or after even Litvinenko and the use of nuclear weapons on our streets, say it's going to be different this time. Why is it that it isn't different after each instance? Why is it, in your view, that the West fails to understand the danger posed by Putin's regime in Russia?

28:32Because war seems to be far away. And, like, if you are a politician and you want to keep your chair, It's quite a tough decision to send an army to another country to protect another country. You literally send the children of your voters to potentially die for another country. It's quite hard to explain to people. But this is like what I'm trying to explain, that it doesn't matter what do you think about what is going on inside the Ukraine. This country should be saved as an independent country. Putin's Gulag should not eat Ukraine. This is dangerous for Europe, for you. And this is a self-protection.

29:21I mean, just to put budget to military to, like, build a protection for your country and ideally send army forces to Ukraine. This is for a European security. and somehow there are not so many left liberal politicians or let's say groups or whatever, speakers saying this. They are just like waving pacificus and think that, you know, we will sign some papers and everything will be fine. It will be not fine. This regime will never be fine. Putin will fuck you up. It's not going to happen like he did it this year, that year, with these people, with those people. Just read the history.

30:13I think what you're saying is he only understands strength. Forced violence. Correct. Yes. I mean, he's Czechist and he's proud. I mean, it's corrupted, rotten, fucked up system, but it's still system.

30:42And you've seen which world they built. Many people have short memory. And if you look like, if you start to look to Ukrainian, like Russian-Ukrainian war, the war which Putin started, like you watch it for the first time, it will take time to find an information and kind of understand. And for example, you're like, was not aware of politics and you just start. So it takes time to, to understand like what, what is going on. And people here, I mean, there is a peace here. There were, there, there are no right police, like we'll knock this door and beat four of us. for many people here, what happened with me and with all of us is far away.

31:44People used to think that the conditions in which they are living, they are just basic conditions. It was like that for, like, always. It wasn't like that always. So people were fighting for all of the rights which we have before. and now watching how easily they're taking like from you and saying in loud things which are, you know, a repetition of some bad stuff from the past is quite, yeah, it's quite something. My last question for you, Mashe. again is quite abstract but it's um it's about home what does the word home mean to you is it a place is it a feeling is it people what does it mean

33:00feeling I think feeling

33:11like if we talk about the place I still have a place where my mom is in Moscow but I cannot physically go there because I will even not manage to go to apartment.

33:26I have our show, which is my home at some point, but I did not build the second base, so I didn't choose any Western country for the attempt to leave. that's kind of like this maybe it will change I don't know it's just three years and several months like this

34:05Machel, Jochina thank you so much for speaking to me, I'm incredibly grateful thank you thank you thank you You've been listening to The Exchange from The New Statesman with me, Oli Dugmore, and my guest, Masha Alyokina. This episode was produced by Catherine Hughes. The podcast will be back next week.

34:33Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.