Pussy Riot member Alyokhina flees Russia

MOSCOW: Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has left Russia, she said, after disguising herself as a food delivery courier to escape police.

Alyokhina joins thousands of Russians who have fled their country since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24.

In September, Alyokhina was sentenced to one year restricted movement while protesting in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, but last month authorities moved to convert her sentence into real jail time.

In an interview with the New York Times this week, Alyokhina, 33, said she dressed up as a food courier to avoid the Moscow police that were staking her out and left her cellphone behind so she couldn’t be tracked. Then a friend drove her to the border with Belarus and a week later she managed to cross into EU member Lithuania.

“It was an unpredictable and big ‘kiss-off’ to the Russian authorities,” she said. Alyokhina spent two years in prison for taking part in the group’s 2012 protest performance inside Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.