Russian band Pussy Riot took advantage of Christmas Eve to release a new song, Mama Don’t Watch TV (Мама, не смотри телевизор), ten months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On this issue, the group protests against the war, against the West’s commercial support for its homeland as it keeps buying gas and oil, and demands that President Vladimir Putin be tried in an international court.
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In a statement, Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Taso Pletner, who appear in the video, describe the Putin government as a “terrorist regime” and its officials, generals and spokesmen as “war criminals”. . . “. In this text they explain that since the conflict began on February 24, military censorship has prevailed in Russia, which prohibits calling the war war and publishing material about the invasion that has not been previously checked by the Kremlin. “Hell, we’re going to tell the truth! This is the music of our anger, outrage and disunity, a desperate and reproachful cry against Putin’s bloodthirsty puppets led by a cannibalistic monster,” they write.
The chorus is based on the phrase a jailed Russian soldier said to his mother: “Mom, there are no Nazis here, don’t watch TV.” After recalling how dissidents or opponents were eliminated by being sent to prison or poisoned, Pussy Riot calls for an embargo on Russian profits from the sale of gas and oil, a ban on the sale of arms and ammunition to that country, seizing bank accounts and properties of Russian officials and oligarchs in the West and increasing sanctions against them; and for an international court to try Putin and his followers, “everyone responsible for the genocide in Ukraine”. They urge their compatriots not to take part in the war or to listen to their propaganda. “Every action against the war is important,” he concludes.
The three members of the Pussy Riot group in court in 2013: from left: Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.AFP
One of the participants in the video, Maria Alyokhina, better known as Masha, is the leader of Pussy Riot. Last May he told EL PAÍS from Iceland: “They arrested me three days after the start of the war with Ukraine. I was in a labor camp again. When they released me, my friends had either left Russia or were in prison. Here everything is always so complicated and stupid. They took my passport. I am here thanks to the solidarity of other artists who helped me escape from Russia. The Pussy Riot exist because of this solidarity, with which we will build something stronger than guns.” Alyokhina escaped from Moscow disguised as a food deliverer. In August 2012, the Pussy Riot, wearing colored ski masks, stormed the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the Russian capital to ask Our Lady to rid the world of Putin. After that performance in 2012, she was sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism, her longest sentence, and was released in December 2013. Alyokhina described her time in prison as a gulag, where she did forced labor “for 12 hours to date.” She was later arrested several times for her activism.
In this interview he defined Putin as follows: “Putin doesn’t scare me. It’s nobody. He’s just some guy who held the presidency in Russia and built a totalitarian state by pretending to be a new Stalin fighting the Nazis. It is not dangerous. The things you have are dangerous. nuclear bombs, missiles. But he’s nobody. He has done nothing but ruin the country. In 22 years he hasn’t built anything. And the rest of the world knows it. And if you spend enough time in Russia and see how it works from the inside, you realize that there is nothing more stupid. That’s why you’re not afraid of him. Nobody’s scared anymore, it’s ridiculous.” Scary was what’s happening in Ukraine, and that’s why the band got together outside of their country and started a tour. And in August they released a new album, Matriarchy Now.
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