A Russian court has convicted three female punk rockers of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for this anti-Putin demonstration filmed at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow:
August 17 was declared "Pussy Riot Global Day" by Amnesty International. There was no amnesty for this wooden cross in Kiev, however, as a topless activist from the Urkanian group FEMEN hacked it down with a chainsaw
Sentiment in the West favors Pussy Riot with 6,552 likes and 1,803 dislikes for their video on YouTube. However, the original Russian version of their video has 11,923 likes and 12,356 dislikes.
It may be that the symbolism is lost on the West. The Russian Orthodox cathedral was destroyed by Stalin in the 1930s. In the 1950s Khrushchev turned the site into a swimming pool. The cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union with donations from over 1 million Russians.
Nonetheless, the two year sentences are too harsh, even for would-be anarchists who might if they succeeded in their political ambitions send large segments of the Russian populace to the Gulags for much longer than that.
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