In today’s WTF news, a video has emerged of Russian Cossack militia attacking members of Pussy Riot with whips and pepper spray. And what were Pussy Riot doing to provoke this? Dancing about wearing bright colours and ski masks. Standing outside a restaurant about 21 miles from the Sochi Winter Games site, the activist/anarchist punk group performed a protest song. They were soon set upon by the Cossacks, who are used by the police to patrol the streets in their absence.
From the footage, it doesn’t seem as if the officials have any desire to simply put out the protest or detain the activists (under what charge would they arrest them, anyway? Gay propaganda?), and they also appear to whip a journalist. Two of the performers, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina were the same women who spent months in Russian prisons last year. They were also briefly arrested a day before this latest footage was filmed, and held by police near Sochi’s ferry terminal for questioning.
Pretty ballsy of them to carry on with all this protesting malarkey, we've got to say. Especially when the authorities' way of dealing with problems is so savage.
According to The Guardian, no arrests have been made.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.