They wore sundresses in Moscow. In January.
This weekend marked a year since Russian punk band Pussy Riot first staged a public protest in Moscow’s Red Square. Two of the group’s members remain in prison on charges of “hooliganism to inspire religious hatred” after a subsequent protest at a Russian orthodox church called for the Virgin Mary to save Russia from leader Vladimir Putin.
Maria Alekhina has refused to plead guilty, but appealed to serve her sentence later, when her now-5-year-old son is older. The court is scheduled to respond to her petition tomorrow.
Alekhina’s colleague Katya Samutsevich, a Pussy Riot member who has already won early release, appeared at the Sundance Film Festival via Skype over the weekend. Asked if her experience had changed the group’s thinking or tactics a year later, she said, basically, no. “We are probably not going to change our general approach,” she told the Utah audience.
Meanwhile, in crisis-wracked Spain, the never-ending saga of the Castellon Ghost Airport got even weirder today, when local press reported a video, produced by the region’s opposition political party, of what appears to be someone re-purposing the never-used airstrip to take practice laps in a Formula 1-style race car. There’s also apparently a $250 million offer on the table from unnamed interests to buy the sham airport (linked article in Spanish) and turn it into some sort of factory, in theory creating at least a few jobs in a country whose latest youth unemployment figure approached three out of five.
(Castellon h/t Andres Bartos)
