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10 February 2020

Russian police raid Pussy Riot’s video shoot claiming it was ‘gay propaganda’

The Russian feminist protest punk rock group were recording a video for their new single 'RAGE'

By Steve Brown

Words: Steve Brown

Russian police were filmed raiding Pussy Riot’s latest video shoot claiming it was ‘gay propaganda’.

The Russian feminist protest punk rock group – who are based in Moscow – have been an outspoken opposition group to President Vladimir Putin – who introduced the anti-gay propaganda law back in 2013.

And now, while recording the video for their latest single ‘RAGE’, police raided the video shoot and shut it down claiming that it was ‘gay propaganda’.

The video, which was partially shot, features 150 queer activists, and is set to the track “БЕСИТ / RAGE”, a song “dedicated to a pain that we – feminists and the queer people – feel being the enemies of the state.”

A spokesperson told Dazed: “We had a contract with the location and paid for everything. It did not matter, because the police’s task was to prevent a video shoot.

“Russian political police commanded to the studio where we were shooting, Lenfilm, to cut off electricity in the whole building.

“When we rented an electric generator, the police who surrounded the building did not let us bring the generator in – to be sure we couldn’t film. Later we were kicked out of the building – with no legal explanations.

“We lost $15k on video production.”

The group posted a snippet of the video on Twitter where the police raid can be seen and wrote: “Today, 9th of February 2020, St Petersburg, the Russian police broke into the location where Pussy Riot were filming a video for our next single “БЕСИТ / RAGE”.

“We were accused of “GAY PROPAGANDA” & “EXTREMISM”. 150 activists, mostly female & queer, took part in the shoot.”

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