Only one of Pussy Riot freed after split ruling

A member of punk band Pussy Riot was freed on appeal yesterday, but a court upheld sentences for two others imposed over a cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin.

Yekaterina Samutsevich walked free from Moscow City Court after six months behind bars but the appeal judge who suspended her two-year sentence said that fellow band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina should serve out their terms.

“I have mixed feelings,” Samutsevich, 30, said outside the court, where she was greeted by applause and whistles from a large crowd in the rain. “I’m happy, of course, but I am upset about the girls.”

Her lawyer told the court that Samutsevich had not performed the “punk protest” near the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February because she had been stopped and led away before it took place.

Samutsevich’s father, Stanislav, said he would take his daughter away for a time to rest, but that when she returned to Moscow, “she will fight for the rest of the girls”.

Defence lawyers, relatives of the women, and rights activists, including the chairman of Putin’s own presidential human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, criticised the split ruling.

“All three of those convicted in this case could certainly be given suspended sentences and that would be right,” Fedotov said, according to Interfax news agency.

In emotional statements from a courtroom cage during the appeal hearing, women from the band said they had not meant to offend the faithful but criticised Putin, who opponents say has cracked down on dissent since starting a new Kremlin term in May.

“We’ll be going to a prison colony while civil war is brewing in this country. Putin is doing everything to make this happen.” Tolokonnikova said, raising her voice to drown out a judge who interrupted when she said the president’s name.

“He is setting people against each other,” she said.

Samutsevich, Alyokhina, 24, and Tolokonnikova, 22, were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred — for a “punk prayer” imploring the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin — and sentenced to two years in jail.

The case sparked an international outcry, with Western governments condemning the sentences as disproportionate, a view not widely shared in Russia, where public opinion was shocked by the protest.

In an interview aired on Sunday to mark his 60th birthday, Putin defended the sentences. “It is right that they were arrested and it was right that the court took this decision because you cannot undermine the fundamental morals and values to destroy the country,” he said.