Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have insisted that they are still members of Pussy Riot, rejecting a recent letter, posted to the group’s official blog, which claimed that they had left the activist organisation.

“I don’t know who they are, these people who claim to be from Pussy Riot and write on social networks,” Tolokonnikova said at yesterday’s Berlin press conference. “We never left Pussy Riot.” In a separate interview with the New York Times, Alyokhina asserted that she and Tolokonnikova are “still in contact with ... the people we performed with” at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

This response seems contrary to the open letter published on 6 February, which professed to be from Pussy Riot’s current membership. “It is no secret that Masha and Nadia are no longer members of the group, and will no longer take part in radical actionism,” they wrote. “Yes, we have lost two friends, two ideological teammates, but the world has acquired two brave human rights defenders ... Unfortunately we cannot congratulate them in person because they refuse to have any contact with us.



According to this letter, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina’s appearance at an Amnesty International event in New York would never have been endorsed by the anti-Putin punks. “Our performances are always illegal,” they wrote. “We never sell tickets to our ‘shows’.” They also took offence to the advertising of the Amnesty gig, which included the image of a man wearing one of Pussy Riot’s distinctive balaclavas. “We are an all-female separatist collective – no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality.”

Not so, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina told the Times. “Pussy Riot can be anyone”, including men, “and no one can excluded from Pussy Riot”, Tolokonnikova said. “[This letter] doesn’t follow the ideology of Pussy Riot ... Pussy Riot can only grow.” The two women also seemed bewildered by the pseudonymous Pussy Rioters who had signed the online document - Garadja, Fara, Shaiba, Cat, Seraphima and Schumacher. Apparently this list of names includes Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina’s former aliases.

Despite the apparent schism among Pussy Riot’s membership, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are moving ahead with their campaign for prisoners’ rights and have even announced plans to run for office in Moscow’s city legislature. “It’s worth a try,” Tolokonnikova said yesterday.