On Sunday, to nobody’s surprise, Vladimir Putin won another six years of Russia’s presidency. Russian political punk group Pussy Riot, of course, were waiting for the predictable victory with a fierce response.
They released a new song (video above) titled Elections to show their defiance to Putin’s 18 years of power. The grimy hop-hop song’s lyrics, translated from Russian, directly state, “Six years we’re gonna fight, we’re not gonna obey during his term.”
They posted the song on YouTube with the following statement:
“What 18 years of Putin’s power has brought to us? Arrests, poisonings, tortures, murders of political activists. Institutional corruption which is HUGE. Total erosion of democratic institutions. Giant economic inequality. Worsening of prison conditions. Environmental catastrophe in lots of industrial regions of Russia. Censorship everywhere – in media, in education, in internet, in people’s heads. Self-censorship, caused by fear.
You should not be deceived, this event on 18th of March is not elections. Falsifications, eliminations of political opponents, Kremlin-controlled media leave no chance to anybody except Putin.”
The fiercely defiant song is sung entirely in Russian. Here’s an English translation of the opening lines:
“6 years we gonna fight
6 years we not gonna obey
6 years I gonna start a gang
6 years we’re not gonna eat slop scraps
6 years we’re gonna fight fight
we’re not gonna obey during this term”
The video additionally features paintings by “political prisoner” Oleg Navalgny, the brother of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who was Putin’s main opponent in elections. Alexei Navalny was barred from contesting in December by the country’s central electoral commission, while Oleg Navalny was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after supposedly being convicted of stealing money from two Russian companies. The European Court of Human Rights, however, described the ruling as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable” according to The Guardian.
Pussy Riot have long been outspoken in their critique of Putin, Russian elites and, more recently, Donald Trump, which has landed them in prison and detention several times in the past.
To learn more about what happened to Putin’s opponents and Sunday’s elections, watch John Oliver and Stephen Colbert’s takes on the Russian elections in the videos below.
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