In Moscow, security forces detain Pussy Riot participant Rita Flores

In the Russian capital, law enforcement officers detained Pussy Riot participant Rita Flores (Margarita Konovalova) at the exit from her home. As the members of the punk group said, the girl was on her way to the detention center on a date with another Pussy Riot member Maria Alekhina. Flores was detained by four police officers and put in an unmarked car, write Open Media. “At the moment, Rita is being taken to the police department in the Kotlovka district,” said Pussy Riot.

Later it became known that Rita Flores was charged with disobedience to the police (Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation). The girl was left before the trial for the night in the OMVD, transfers Interfax with reference to the human rights project Apology of Protest.

On November 28, 2020, Flores, together with Maria Alekhina and artist Farhad Israfilli-Gelman, held the action “Caution, fragile” on Manezhnaya Square. It was dedicated to the protesters who were prosecuted in Moscow in the summer of 2019 for throwing a bottle and a glass at riot police officers. As part of the performance, activists in sundresses and kokoshniks were tied with a ribbon with the inscription “Caution, fragile!” to the lamppost of the artist Farhad Israfilli-Gelman, on which there was a uniform resembling the equipment of riot police. “A paper cup and a plastic bottle have been called weapons for no reason, but the most terrible weapon directed against the common people is the police state,” Alekhina noted. After the action, the court arrested Flores for 20 days.

On Tuesday it became known that Russia left Pussy Riot member Alexander Sofeev. Earlier, Pussy Riot activist Veronika Nikulshina also left Russia for Georgia. After leaving the detention center, a member of the Pussy Riot group, director Anna Kuzminykh, announced her intention to leave Russia. She and Sofeyev were arrested twice under the article on non-compliance with the demands of the police. Veronika Nikulshina also spent two terms under arrest within a month.

Maria Alekhina is serving another 15-day term of arrest under the same article on disobedience to the police. She is also under house arrest as a defendant in the case of incitement to violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules at the winter rallies in support of the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Alexei Navalny. According to the investigation, due to calls by Alekhina and other defendants for an uncoordinated rally on January 23, people sick with COVID came to Moscow, among others. Thus, “the threat of mass disease was created,” the investigators say.

The activists came to the conclusion that they were specially left with a “certain time gap” between their release from the special detention center and a new detention in order to force them to leave the country. At the same time, Alexander Sofeev said that he did not consider himself a political emigrant and hoped that the baseless arrests of Pussy Riot participants would end after the autumn elections to the State Duma. “I do not intend to leave Russia forever – this is my home and my heart,” he stressed.

Veronika Nikulshina and Alexander Sofeev said that they were being followed right up to boarding a plane departing from Russia.