MOSCOW, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Russian anti-Kremlin feminist punk band ‘Pussy Riot’ was designated an extremist organisation by a Moscow court on Monday, banning its activity inside Russia at the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office.
The ruling, announced by Moscow’s court service, follows a court decision in September that handed down jail sentences of up to 13 years to five of the group’s members in absentia after finding them guilty of spreading lies about the Russian army.
The group’s members, labelled as ‘foreign agents,’ by the authorities rejected the charges at the time, saying they were politically-motivated.
The band, whose members are outside Russia, sprung to global prominence in 2012 after being jailed for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow.
The group, which opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine, has since become a symbol of anti-Kremlin protest action.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, the group’s founder, who is in the United States and whose arrest the Russian authorities are seeking, last month shrugged off the move to designate the group as extremist.
“If telling the truth is extremism, then we are happy to be extremists,” she wrote on X.
(Reporting by Andrew OsbornEditing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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