Anti-Putin activists with the punk band Pussy Riot unfurled a large banner at Trump Tower in New York on Monday in their latest show of support for a Ukrainian film director jailed in Russia.
Oleg Sentsov is serving a 20-year sentence on charges of masterminding terrorist attacks in the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. The August 2015 ruling was met with criticism from rights groups and filmmakers worldwide.
"We slightly occupied Trump Tower," the group wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Two Pussy Riot activists were briefly detained in the Siberian city of Yakutsk over the summer for unfolding a “Free Sentsov” banner on a bridge near Sentsov’s prison
“We came to occupy Trump Tower to call attention to political prisoners,” Pussy Riot wrote in a Facebook post on Monday.
The group named another Ukrainian activist serving a 10-year sentence on terror charges in Russia, Alexander Kolchenko, as one among “hundreds of political prisoners behind bars waiting for your support”.
“Because they, like you, did not sit by — they were fighting for their freedom in Crimea,” Pussy Riot wrote.
Accompanying video footage showed three women in Pussy Riot’s trademark bright balaclavas hanging a “Free Sentsov” banner inside a building lobby.
Pussy Riot rose to prominence in 2012 when Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and a third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, were handed two-year prison sentences for an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.
