The Russian punk protesters known as Pussy Riot have indeed followed up on their promise to pull off a political protest at the site of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
As NPR's Corey Flintoff said on Morning Edition, the women and their male guitarist overcame being detained by police several times this week and being horse-whipped by Cossacks trying to enforce a government ban on protests.
Now, their song and video — "Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland" — is on the Web.
Corey reminds us that Pussy Riot continues to call attention to "what they say is [an] autocracy and kind of police-state tactics by President Putin's government."
Three members of Pussy Riot were convicted of "hooliganism" for being part of a "punk prayer" in 2012 at Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral. One of them was released from prison just a few months later. The other two, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova ("Nadya") and Maria Alyokhina ("Masha") were in prison for nearly two years. Their release in late December was widely seen as an effort by the Putin government to shore up Russia's international image before the Winter Games began.
Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are among the Pussy Riot members who have been in Sochi this week. Following the posting of the new video, according to The Associated Press, "band members said they were returning to Moscow to attend the verdicts in a trial of 20 people arrested after clashes on the eve of Putin's inauguration to a third term in 2012."
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