Pussy Riot's New Video Makes Some Noise for Putin's Election Day

It’s such a non-event that it barely made a sound on today’s news, so Pussy Riot does that, in balaclavas and hoods in shadowy unidentifiable locations with the bass tuned all the way up. They provide a reminder of the brutality behind appearances, which, from a Western perspective, are typically harmless-looking Putin photo-ops. In the translation below their YouTube post, they write:

Arrests, poisonings, tortures, murders of political activists. Institutional corruption which is HUGE. Total erosion of democratic institutions. Giant economic inequality. Worsening of prison conditions. Environmental catastrophe in lots of industrial regions of Russia. Censorship everywhere – in media, in education, in internet, in people’s heads. Self-censorship, caused by fear. You should not be deceived, this event on 18th of March is not elections. Falsifications, eliminations of political opponents, Kremlin-controlled media leave no chance to anybody except Putin.

Razor wire-motif drawings of prisoners and infrastructure which overlay the video are attributed to prisoner Oleg Navalny, brother of Putin’s main political opponent Alexei Navalny. Alexei’s registration to run for office this cycle was denied because of what are widely believed to be spurious embezzlement charges against both brothers, which the European Court of Human Rights has determined to be unjust. Both brothers were given 3 1/2 year prison sentences; Alexei’s sentence was suspended, and he claims that the government is holding Oleg “hostage” in order to silence him. Last year, Oleg illustrated an online choose-your-own adventure game, Survive Russian prison! I died.

If Putin finishes out the term, he will have held power in some capacity for 24 years, at which point he will be 74. When asked whether he’d run again in 2030, an unconstitutional third consecutive term, the state-monitored Russian news channel RT reported that he joked, “Let’s count. What, do you think I will sit until I’m 100 years old?” And then added, “I am not planning any constitutional reforms for now.”