Two members of Russia's Pussy Riot collective will be freed soon, under a new amnesty bill which pardons mothers of small children, Reuters reports. After performing a "punk prayer" at Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral, Christ the Saviour, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (pictured above) and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced in August 2012 to two years in prison camps for "hooliganism." Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina had been due for release next March. A third Pussy Riot member, also found guilty and sentenced in 2012, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed last year.
The amnesty will also allow some 30 Greenpeace activists to avoid trial, but Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the bill had no ties to those activists or Pussy Riot. "[The amnesty] is neither linked to Greenpeace, nor this group [Pussy Riot]," he said in a press conference today.
