Last night I saw Pussy Riot, on the London leg of their Riot Days European tour to raise money for a children’s hospital in Ukraine. Their producer, Alexander Cheparukhin, came on stage to introduce them. I guess he was about my age, I couldn’t be precise because I didn’t have my glasses. He vibed the sort of age, where you can’t see things without glasses. He described how he met Maria Alyokhina (who also goes by Masha Alekhina), one of the founding members of the band who was first imprisoned in 2012 and then under constant surveillance, harassment, house arrest, arrest-arrest and persecution, until she escaped from Russia to Iceland earlier this year. When her sentence was handed down 10 years ago, he said, it was the first time in his life he had witnessed the political imprisonment of artists.

Source: I saw the magnificent Pussy Riot last night. If only the world had listened to what they were saying a decade ago | Zoe Williams | The Guardian