The Russian punk rock group, Pussy Riot, frequent target of Trump’s good buddy, Vladimir Putin, is, once again, under government attack. They were in the Ukrainian Peninsula to protest the jailing of filmmaker, Oleh Sentsov. As of now, it is known that group member, Maria Alyokhina, is being detained in Russian occupied Crimea.
An RFE/RL correspondent reported that police detained Alyokhina in a cafe in the Crimean city of Simferopol on February 27.
The move came after she was confronted by several men in traditional Cossack military uniforms who called themselves members of "Crimea's self-defense."
Human rights activists later said that Alyokhina was brought to a police station.
And these are Paul Manafort’s old pals. No, they are more than that; these are the people he worked to keep in power in exchange for lots of money.
As for the other Pussy Riot members, Olga Borisova and Aleksandr Sofeyev, their whereabouts are officially “unknown.”
Borisova and Sofeyev planned to return to Moscow on February 27, but an RFE/RL correspondent reported that they were not on the flight from Simferopol to Moscow. They were also not answering their phones.
Russian-imposed Crimean authorities have not officially commented on the detentions.
This isn’t the first time the group faced retribution for supporting Sentsov.
In August, Alyokhina and Borisova were detained and fined after staging a protest near the remote prison in Siberia where Sentsov is serving a 20-year prison sentence on terrorism charges that he and supporters say are groundless.
Sentsov is from Crimea, the Ukrainian region that Russia forcibly seized in March 2014.
Further:
Pussy Riot achieved prominence in 2012 after Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot performer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a stunt in which band members burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral and sang a "punk prayer" against then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was campaigning for his return to the presidency at the time.
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were close to the end of their two-year prison sentences when they were freed in December 2013, under an amnesty they dismissed as a propaganda stunt to improve Putin's image ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
They have focused largely on fighting for the rights of prisoners since their release.
Of course in the summer of 2016, Manafort was the Trump Presidential campaign manager, working for free, despite his personal financial crisis. Then, the campaign got the RNC to soften his platform on the Ukraine, and his money troubles suddenly lifted. Meanwhile, Trump spoke to the press.
Donald Trump’s call on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails Wednesday resulted in widespread criticism. But his comments on Crimea, coupled with ones he made last week on NATO, are likely to have greater significance if he is elected president in November.
The question came from Mareike Aden, a German reporter, who asked him whether a President Trump would recognize Crimea as Russian and lift sanctions on Moscow imposed after its 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory. The candidate’s reply: “Yes. We would be looking at that.”
Yes, he sure would.