What they are is a bunch of calculating, opportunistic, obscenity-fixated young women who have achieved their objective – worldwide recognition and in return for two short years in a penal colony hope to emerge to a financially secure future.

Where is the Pussy Riot back list of recordings? Not at any of Moscow’s widespread music and video stores, that’s for sure. I asked the sales assistant in “Kino & Musika”, a busy store on Bellarussky Square  in central Moscow for a disc of “Pussy Riot” and she looked at me as if I was crazy. Not a band then.

Feminist? Not a word in all their court polemics or interviews about the issues affecting women in Russia – domestic violence, abortion as contraception or wage equality. So not feminist then.

Attention seekers? Yes!

As Alexander Mercouris points out in his impeccably researched blog http://mercouris.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/pussy-riot-2/

“It is not disputed that the “punk prayer”, accompanied to riotous music and dance, was filled with expletives and profanities and used grossly scatological language.  Nor is it disputed that its last section was an obscene parody of the Christian liturgical hymn the Sanctus, substituting the word “shit” for the word “holy”, or that the “punk prayer” criticised the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, whom it called a “bitch” (Russian suka).”

Tolokonnikova Mercouris says is either married to or in a relationship with one of the leading members of Voina and has been active in several of Voina’s activities.  So has Maria Alyokhina, one of the other two women defendants in the Pussy Riot case.  The overlap between the two groups is so great that he feels justified in treating the two groups as in essence one and the same.

Mercouris resports that “Since its formation in presumably 2008 Voina has staged in public a succession of extreme actions described as performance art.  These have included the painting of a male phallus on a St. Petersburg Bridge, the staging of a public orgy at the Timiryazev Museum in Moscow involving nudity and (apparently) full penetrative sex (Tolokonnikova was a participant though heavily pregnant), the throwing of live cats at the staff of a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow, the overturning of police cars apparently on one occasion with a policeman inside, the firebombing of property with petrol bombs, the staged hanging of an immigrant and a homosexual in a supermarket, the projection of a skull and crossbones onto the building housing the Russian government, the spilling of large live cockroaches onto the stomach of a pregnant member of the group (Tolokonnikova again) and the theft of a frozen chicken from a supermarket, which was stuffed up the vagina of one of the women members (apparently Maria Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova apparently was also present). The group routinely films or photographs its activities, which it uploads onto the internet.”

http://nataly-lenskaya.livejournal.com/348825.html is the link to the video of the chicken performance in a St Petersburg supermarket.

“The common feature in all of these actions whether of Voina or of Pussy Riot is illegality.  In their interview Pussy Riot has openly admitted that all its actions have been illegal and that illegality is an essential part of their actions.  That some of the illegal activities engaged in both by Voina and Pussy Riot involve committing criminal offences is not disputed,” succinctly put by Mercouris.

“The other feature of many of these actions is their grossly sexual and obscene nature.  Indeed sexual obscenity seems to be an obsession.  Both Voina and Pussy Riot have openly admitted to using sexual obscenity as a weapon (indeed obscenity is part of Pussy Riot’s name)”, he continues.

“What tends to be overlooked in the mass of commentary about Voina and Pussy Riot is that their actions take place in public places within the possible sight or hearing of children.  This was true of the phallus painted on the bridge, the orgy in the museum and the theft of the frozen chicken in the supermarket.  Film of the last event shows a young child present though he may have been brought there by one of the group’s members.  Pussy Riot’s performances also frequently take place in public spaces such as the metro, supermarkets, clothing stores, on top of a trolley bus and in Red Square.  The coarse and profane language Pussy Riot always use could therefore also have been heard by children and given the busy nature of some of these places surely was.  Again I wonder whether some of Pussy Riot’s western supporters are aware of this or would feel quite the same way about Pussy Riot if they knew about it?” asks Mercouris.

As usual, while the western media rains hell on the heads of President Putin and his government on the basis of dubious or just false propositions, the vast majority of Russians including the young and hip are oblivious.

What western commentators, immersed in a society which eschews religious conformity, have failed to grasp is that Russia is indeed a religious nation. The four acknowledged religions are Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. Whether it is the three designated meeting places in Moscow  for mass Muslim prayer at the end of the Ramadan month of fasting, or the banners at Easter strung across main streets from Moscow to Vladivostok proclaiming “Christ is Risen” Russia’s new found adherence to religion is evident. In the 20 or so years since the collapse of communism religion has come out of Russia’s closet and in most orthodox homes there is a religious ‘corner’ with icons. The nation pays at least lip service to religion. There is no sympathy for a bunch of what are seen to be self-centred, obscenity obsessed, young women who should have outgrown their adolescent fantasies.

Thousands of CD's but no Pussy Riot Bonar