The punk rock band Pussy Riot, which is critical of the Kremlin, is back with an anti-war song that wants to shake people up – but also makes specific demands on the West.
Vilnius – ‘Mama, don’t watch TV’ is the first release in eight months on the YouTube channel of anti-Kremlin punk rock band Pussy Riot. With the song, which was released at Christmas, the activists are clearly against Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine war waged by Russia. According to the band, the chorus is based on the words of a captured Russian conscript. In a telephone conversation with his mother, the soldier had said: “Mom, there are no Nazis here, don’t watch TV” – an allusion to state-controlled television in Russia. Russian propaganda poisons people’s hearts every day, criticizes the punk rock activists.
War in Ukraine: Pussy Riot release anti-Putin war song with iconic video
The anti-war song accompanies the Kremlin-critical punk rock band with a symbolic video. In it you can see: images from the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda, the punk rock band in the “underground” and symbolic elements. One of the recurring symbols in the video is a suitcase with blood pouring out of it. Everyone can interpret the suitcase differently, the news magazine quoted mirror band member Olga Borisova. “For some symbolizes [der Koffer] the dirty money that is still flowing out of Russia, for the others a war that doesn’t get enough attention,” the activist continued. The image of the suitcase could also stand for Putin’s policies, which bring blood and death to Europe’s streets, Borisova added.
The video also reminds of the numerous poisoning attacks on opposition figures and Kremlin critics, which are attributed to the Russian government. “Those who oppose Putin will be imprisoned, poisoned with military poisons and killed,” the band wrote under the video. “The tradition of political poisoning goes back more than a hundred years, ‘Laboratory X’ – the first laboratory for military poisons established by the NKVD.” NKVD is the name of the interior ministry of the former Soviet Union.
According to Pussy Riot, Putin and the Russian domestic secret service FSB are proud of this ‘tradition’ and name alleged poison victims such as Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Skripal, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Pyotr Wersilov and Alexei Navalny. Even during the Ukraine negotiations in early March, rumors of poisoning emerged. That Wall Street Journal had reported that members of the delegations, including the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, had been poisoned.
Ukraine war: Pussy Riot activists make concrete demands on the West
At a concert in Munich in May, the Pussy Riot activists criticized: “Europe is sponsoring this war by buying oil and gas”. Now the band is again demanding an “embargo on the purchase of Russian oil and gas and on the sale of weapons and police ammunition to Russia,” as they say under the video. In addition, Pussy Riot is demanding the seizure of Western bank accounts belonging to Russian officials and oligarchs, and an international tribunal against the Russian president, his staff and everyone “responsible for the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.”
The feminist collective Pussy Riot became known in 2012 with the “Punk Prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The performance was just 41 seconds long, but it instantly made the group a global symbol of the struggle within Russia against Putin. Shortly thereafter, the band members Marija Alyokhina and bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were sentenced to two years in a prison camp. Alyokhina fled Russia shortly before the 2022 European tour, according to her lawyer, although she was under police surveillance. After fleeing, she is said to have stayed in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
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