Marcel Winatschek

Two Women Who Make Putin Look Exactly Like What He Is

Masha Alyokhina and Nadia Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot sat down on The Colbert Report during their US tour and talked about Vladimir Putin, the Sochi Winter Olympics, and the state-tolerated violence against gay and bisexual people happening inside Russia’s borders. Watching them do it was, and I don’t say this lightly, one of the more genuinely affecting things I’ve seen on late-night television. Not in a scripted, carefully produced way—in the way that happens when two people have been through actual shit and come out the other side still capable of warmth and precision and humor.

They’d gotten out of Russian prison just months before. They sat on that couch and were funny. Charming, even. Everything Putin represents looked measurably smaller by contrast, which I suspect was entirely the point. All the props in the world to both of them.