Last night, the two recently freed members of Pussy Riot, Masha Alyokhina and Nadia Tolokonnikova, appeared on stage at Brooklyn's Barclays Center at Amnesty International's Bringing Human Rights Home Concert. They were introduced by Madonna. But hours prior to the concert, other, anonymous members of Pussy Riot emailed an open letter to supporters, and posted it on their Livejournal. The letter stated that Nadia and Masha are no longer part of Pussy Riot. (Both women have stated as much in interviews, as they refocus their efforts on prison reform).

"We are very pleased with Masha's and Nadia's release," the letter reads. "We are proud of their resistance against harsh trials that fell to their lot, and their determination by all means to continue the struggle that they had started during their stay in the colonies."

"Unfortunately for us," it continues, "they are being so carried away with the problems in Russian prisons, that they completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of our group—feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult, all of which, as a matter of fact, was the cause for their unjust punishment."

In the open letter, the anonymous members note that Nadia and Masha have refused to communicate with them. They expressed frustration with how the media has continued to refer to them as members of Pussy Riot, and said "the apotheosis of this misunderstanding" was last night's Amnesty International concert. It continued:

Moreover, instead of the names of Nadia and Masha, the poster of the [Amnesty International] event showed a man in a balaclava with electric guitar, under the name of Pussy Riot, while the organizers smartly called for people to buy expensive tickets. All this is an extreme contradiction to the very principles of Pussy Riot collective: We are all-female separatist collective—no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality. We belong to leftist anti-capitalist ideology—we charge no fees for viewing our art-work, all our videos are distributed freely on the web, the spectators to our performances are always spontaneous passers by, and we never sell tickets to our 'shows'. Our performances are always 'illegal', staged only in unpredictable locations and public places not designed for traditional entertainment. The distribution of our clips is always through free and unrestricted media channels. We are anonymous, because we act against any personality cult, against hierarchies implied by appearance, age and other visible social attributes. We cover our heads, because we oppose the very idea of using female face as a trademark for promoting any sort of goods or services. The mixing of the rebel feminist punk image with the image of institutionalised defenders of prisoners' rights, is harmful for us as collective, as well as it is harmful for the new role that Nadia and Masha have taken on.

The anonymous members nonetheless expressed gratitude and support of Nadia and Masha's new goals. "Yes, we lost two friends, two ideological fellow member, but the world has acquired two brave, interesting, controversial human rights defenders," the letter reads. "We appreciate their choice and sincerely wish them well in their new career."

The New York Times notes that last night, Nadia and Masha had no comment on the letter.

Watch Madonna's introduction of Masha Alyokhina and Nadia Tolokonnikova last night:

Revisit Pussy Riot's 2012 performance at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral: