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MOSCOW – Russian punk band Pussy Riot unveiled a music video for a new protest song titled “Putin Will Teach You How to Love Your Motherland” from Sochi on Thursday.
The band arrived in the Winter Olympics host city over the weekend and has been filming around town throughout the week, despite frequent interruptions from the authorities, including getting briefly detained on several occasions. On Wednesday, the band members were whipped by Cossacks militia while shooting outside an Olympic venue.
VIDEO: Sochi: Pussy Riot Members Whipped by Cossack Militia
The new video, posted to YouTube, features footage of Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina — recently released from Russian prison — wearing ski masks while getting attacked by the uniformed militiamen.
The band had planned to unveil the video at a press conference in Sochi on Thursday morning, but according to organizations assisting Pussy Riot with the event — Cinema for Peace and The Voice Project — the hotel abruptly canceled 30 minutes before the start time, saying that a pipe had burst. Improvising, the band held the press conference on the street outside.
STORY: Sochi: Pussy Riot Members Say They Were Arrested at Olympics
The lyrics for the track contain references to the anti-Putin protests in Moscow on May 6, 2012, which resulted in the arrest of activists. The song denounces Russia’s authorities for holding political prisoners — and makes a point of doing so against the background of the Sochi Olympics, Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s grant effort to burnish the country’s international image.
“Freedom to all political prisoners of the May 6 case, to the [jailed] environmentalist Yevgeny Vitishko and all other political prisoners!” reads a statement on Pussy Riot’s website. The site also calls on protestors to show up outside a Moscow court on Friday, the day a verdict in the May 6 case is to be announced.
Meanwhile, doctors at a clinic in Sochi, which Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova visited after getting beaten on Wednesday, told Russian wire service RIA Novosti that the two musicians’ injuries weren’t serious and didn’t require medical treatment.
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