FUSE TV - Pussy Riot Blasts Its 2 Famous Members for "Harmful New Role"

Recently-freed Pussy Riot members Maria "Masha" Alyokhina and Nadezhda "Nadya" Tolokonnikova took the stage with Madonna at Wednesday night's all-star Amnesty International benefit concert in Brooklyn, but their punk compatriots back in Russia are unimpressed. In fact, they're kinda pissed. 

Just hours after the benefit ended, Pussy Riot's anonymous members blasted Nadya and Masha on their blog for participating in a charity concert not in keeping with the collective's feminist punk ideology. Although Masha and Nadya technically left Pussy Riot back in December, they're going by that name on their current Western media tour (including a hilarious turn on The Colbert Report), which is presumably why the remaining members of the group are intent on distancing themselves from the now-public figures. 

"Now it is no secret that Masha and Nadya [are] out of the group, and will no longer engage [in] actionism," they wrote. [Note: We translated their text via Google Translate.] "Now they are engaged in a new project. Now they protect the rights of prisoners.

"And as you know, protection of rights is incompatible with radical political statements and provocative works of art, raises conflicting topics in modern society. As well as gender conformity is not compatible with radical feminism."

The anonymous Pussy Riot members also took issue with the promotion behind the Amnesty International concert Nadya and Masha attended. "Instead of the names of Nadya and Masha, the poster of the [Amnesty International] event showed a man in a balaclava with electric guitar, under the name of Pussy Riot, while the organizers smartly called for people to buy expensive tickets. All this is an extreme contradiction to the very principles of Pussy Riot collective: We are all-female separatist collective—no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality."

The remaining members of Pussy Riot insist the increasingly public profile of Nadya and Masha does not aid their case: "The mixing of the rebel feminist punk image with the image of institutionalized defenders of prisoners' rights is harmful for us as collective, as well as it is harmful for the new role that Nadia and Masha have taken on."

Despite their differences, Russian Pussy Riot members still wish the best for Nadya and Masha. "Yes, we lost two friends, two ideological fellow member[s], but the world has acquired two brave, interesting, controversial human rights defenders—fighters for the rights of prisoners in Russian prisons."