Maria Alyokhina

Maria "Masha" Vladimirovna Alyokhina (Мария Владимировна Алёхина) is a Russian political activist.

She is a member of the anti-Putinist punk rock group Pussy Riot.

Maria Vladimirovna Alyokhina, also known as Masha, was born on June 6, 1988, in Moscow, Russia.

Her mother works as a programmer and her father is a mathematics professor.

She was raised by her mother, and only met her father at age 21.

During her youth she hated the Russian education system and changed schools four times:

They discourage people from thinking and asking questions, they only teach you to follow the rules and submit without explanation or, most importantly, reason... Obviously I didn’t like that.

Who would?

She studied journalism at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow, where she participated in a sequence of literature workshops given by the poets Dmitry Vedenyapin and Alexey Kubrik.

On August 17, 2012, Alyokhina, together with fellow Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, was convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

She has been recognized as a political prisoner by the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners.

Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience due to "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities."

At the time of her arrest, Alyokhina was a fourth-year student.

She is also a published poet.

She has been involved in environmental activism with Greenpeace Russia, opposing development projects in the Khimki Forest, and was a volunteer at the Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow.

She is a vegan and reportedly collapsed from hunger during the trial, as no vegan meals were provided in detention.

Alyokhina played an active role in the Pussy Riot trial, cross-examining witnesses, and aggressively questioning the charges and proceedings.

She said in her closing statement:

For me, this trial only has the status of a "so-called" trial.

And I am not afraid of you.

I am not afraid of lies and fiction, of the thinly disguised fraud in the sentence of this so-called court.

Because you can only take away my so-called freedom.

And that is the exact kind that exists now in Russia.

But nobody can take away my inner freedom.

Alyokhina was released from prison on December 23, 2013 under an amnesty bill passed by the Russian Duma, allowing the release of several inmates.

Following her release, Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova announced their intention to campaign for prisoner's rights in Russia.

In 2013, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova founded a media outlet, MediaZona, which focuses on the Russian penal and judicial systems.

On March 6, 2014, she was assaulted and injured at a fast food outlet by local youths in Nizhny Novgorod along with Tolokonnikova.

In February 2014, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were detained by police in the Adler district of Sochi in connection with an alleged hotel theft.

They were released without charge.

On February 19 footage surfaced showing Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina being attacked with horsewhips by Cossacks who were patrolling Sochi during the 2014 Winter Olympics.

On January 23, 2021, Alyokhina was arrested in Moscow and detained for 48 hours for attending a protest in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

She was charged with "violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules", a criminal offence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On January 29, Fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova spoke out on Alyokhina's situation, stating "She faces criminal charges and two years in jail for encouraging people to go to protests on social networks. This is a face of Putin's Russia. They clearly have nothing else to do, but to put Pussy Riot in jail over and over again."

On March 18 Moscow's Basmanny District Court extended Alyokhina's house arrest until June 23.

On June 23 Maria Alyokhina, along with fellow Pussy Riot activists Lucy Shtein and Anna Kuzminykh, were sentenced to 15 days in jail.

The activists were found guilty of disobeying police officers.

On July 8 Alyokhina was again detained upon her release and given another 15 day prison sentence.

In September 2021, a Moscow court sentenced her to one year of "restrictions on freedom" (a parole-like sentence).

On February 7, 2022, Alyokhina was arrested again, at her home.