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On 15 December 2025, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court designated feminist punk collective Pussy Riot an “extremist organisation”, banning all its activities across Russia after a closed‑door hearing requested by the Prosecutor General’s Office. The ruling means anyone deemed to “participate” in or promote the group can face criminal prosecution, including for actions linked to earlier protests and online activity. Nadya Tolokonnikova has warned that even possessing a balaclava, storing Pussy Riot’s music on a device or liking their posts on social media could now be used as grounds for a case.

From punk prayer to global symbol
Founded in 2011 in Moscow, Pussy Riot emerged as a feminist protest art collective using guerrilla performances to challenge patriarchy, corruption and the growing fusion of state and church authority under Vladimir Putin. The group gained global prominence in 2012 after the “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where members performed “Virgin Mary, Drive Putin Away” in front of the altar. Several participants, including Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested, tried and sentenced to prison, in a case that became emblematic of Russia’s willingness to criminalise dissenting artistic expression. In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights found that Russia had violated the band members’ rights in connection with those prosecutions and related treatment.

Escalating repression of artistic dissent
Despite sustained repression, Pussy Riot has received significant international recognition, including being named in Time magazine’s 2012 TIME 100 list and receiving Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Arts Award the same year. Human rights groups and media freedom monitors view the new extremist designation as part of a broader trend in which Russia’s anti‑extremism and anti‑terrorism laws are applied to political opposition, independent media and cultural actors, rather than being confined to advocacy of violence. Amnesty International, for example, has described a “disturbing escalation” in the use of vague extremism provisions to stifle dissent and control public discourse.

Artists’ voices and the stakes for artistic freedom
In testimonies gathered by Index on Censorship and international media, Pussy Riot members depict the extremist label as an attempt to erase them from Russian public life while legitimising state violence at home and abroad. Nika Nikulshina argues that real extremism is seen in drones and missiles striking Ukrainian homes and in torture in prisons, not in protest art or actions such as the 2018 World Cup pitch invasion. Lucy Shtein describes the decision as part of an “Orwellian” inversion in which those in power brand artists as extremists while presenting themselves as patriots, a reversal that, in her view, only confirms that the group’s course of resistance is the right one. For organisations working on artistic freedom, the case illustrates both the personal cost borne by artists and the importance of sustained international solidarity with those targeted under extremism laws for their creative expression.

Russia has taken an unprecedented step in its crackdown on dissent.
On 15 December 2025, a Moscow court declared Pussy Riot an “extremist organisation,” effectively criminalising not just protest art, but memory, symbols and solidarity itself.

The decision highlights how extremism laws are increasingly used to silence artists, erase cultural resistance and intimidate communities far beyond the courtroom. Artistic freedom is not a fringe issue, it is a frontline indicator of democratic collapse.

#ArtisticFreedom #FreedomOfExpression #PussyRiot #HumanRights #Censorship #Authoritarianism #CulturalRights #Russia #ExtremismLaws

Russia Brands Pussy Riot Extremist

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