New Pussy Riot video slams Putin, Russia’s oil industry (VIDEO)
Supporters of the Russian punk band ‘Pussy Riot’ wear masks and hold placards demanding their freedom as they protest in front of of the Russian embassy in Warsaw on August 17, 2012.
Members of the Russian punk performance group Pussy Riot released a video Tuesday criticizing President Vladimir Putin's ties to the country's oil industry. It is the group's first video in almost a year.
The music video, called "Like a Red Prison," shows four members of the group in their signature, brightly-colored "balaclava" masks and tight dresses, taking a sledge hammer to a pipeline and pouring oil on what appears to be a picture of Igor Sechin.
Sechin is head of the state oil firm Rosneft. The punk activists are also seen pouring oil on a portrait of Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's state Investigative Committee, which prosecutes serious crimes, and has recently been criticized for targeting a number of opposition figures.
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Over the course of the three-and-a-half minute punk rock rendition, the women sing and scream Russian protest lyrics while they perform on top of gas stations and oil pipelines.
"Red prison" refers to the former Soviet Union, according to Voice of America.
Two members of Pussy Riot remain in jail for performing inside Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral in February 2012.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alekhina, 25, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, received two-year sentences on hooliganism charges after entering Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral and giving a brief punk performance which took aim at Putin's close relationship with the church.
Samutsevich was later released on appeal. The trial has been criticized both internationally and within Russia as an example of Putin's increasing crackdown on civil liberties and public dissent.
Watch the YouTube video:
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