On Sunday March 18th, 2018 Russian citizens will be heading to the polls to vote for their Presidential elections and punk band and activist group Pussy Riot decided to release a new single, appropriately titled “Elections”. According to Pitchfork, the feminist art collective has accompanied the released with a tweet that reads “it’s the election day in Russia (guess who’ll win??)”.

The band has recently released a music video in collaboration with TV on the radio’s  Dave Sitek called “Bad Apples”, in which they mainly address the issue of police brutality. They are also busy  touring Northern America at the moment, for their first-ever headlining tour.

The group rose to prominence for its aversion to the Russian political system, specifically by Vladimir Putin. The band has been making headlines since two of the members were jailed after staging a “punk prayer” at a Moscow’s cathedral. Despite obtaining sympathy and support from Christian Orthodox groups in Russia, they ended up facing a 2 year sentence.

However their aversion to Putin goes a long way back and has been expressed by members of the collective in various ways such as sewing their mouth shut, rolling naked in barbed wire and nailing their scrotum to cobblestones in Moscow’s Red Square, as Petr Pavlensky. Before getting arrested for performing in a church, another member of Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova took part in a public sex orgy at a zoological museum, while being pregnant.

All of the above is simply an effort, according to the group, to shed a light on Russia’s human rights violations and severe despotic ruling.  

Photo Credit: Brett Padelford