Freed Pussy Riot Member Katia Will Be Taking Your Questions

Here’s your chance to ask Yekaterina “Katia” Samutsevich — one of the three members of Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot who were jailed on “hooliganism” charges for performing a “punk prayer” against Vladimir Putin on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral — anything you want.

Katia, 30, was released last October after switching lawyers and arguing that she was tackled by a security guard before participating in the performance so didn’t actually dance in front of the altar — that’s the oh-so-blasphemous move that really offended Orthodox higher-ups, so they say. She’s still on probation. Her two co-defendants, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, are currently toiling away in prison camps; they’ve been incarcerated for over a year. No one has been able to contact them lately, according to Rob Lieber, an organizer with FreePussyRiot.org.

The Kremlin’s message is clear: if you express anti-Putin dissent, you’re fucked.

Leave your questions for Katia, who was a software programmer for a military institute before she became disillusioned by top-rank corruption, down below. (If you want to learn more about her, The Daily Beast recently ran a good profile that covers her concerns about her jailed friends — the women have both experienced severe health issues and endured death threats from prisoners who’ve been coerced by guards — and how nobody understands “anything about our feminist ideas.”)

We’ll post the best questions along with Katia’s responses on Monday — the same day a documentary about the group, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, premieres on HBO.