Zee Media Bureau
Moscow: Freed punk band Pussy Riot members have maintained their rebellious tone after the release saying that they wanted `paranoid` Vladimir Putin to be replaced by ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as Russian President.
In their first news conference after they were freed, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, and Maria Alyokhina, 25 said now that they had experienced the condition within prisons, they wanted to deciate themselves towards reforming the pathetic prison system in Russia.
"The system should be on its toes. We will make it be on its toes," Tolokonnikova said.
The two-hour news conference was aired live on opposition television station Dozhd.
Both the members who were freed two months earlier than their scheduled release, had earlier slammed the act as Kremlin`s PR stunt.
Speaking on Putin, the brunette band member, Tolokonnikova described him as an opaque person who “builds walls around him that block out reality.”
“Vladimir Putin is a very closed, opaque chekist... He is very much afraid”.
“I think he believes that Western countries are a threat, that it’s a big bad world out there where houses walk on chicken legs and there is a global masonic conspiracy. I don’t want to live in this terrifying fairytale,” she added.
Saying that their attitude towards Putin hadn`t changed, the brunette said, "We would still like to do what they put us in jail for. We would still like to drive him out".
Speaking in the similar tone, Alyokhina criticised the system built by Putin, saying "There are constant conspiracies, constant suspicions".
"If a person is trying to control everything, has made this his main goal, then sooner or later –- and most likely sooner –- control will slip out of his hands,” she said.
Tolokonnikova said that instead of Putin, the recently freed former oil tycoon Khodorkovsky should be the Russian President.
Having spent 10 years in jail, Khodorkovsky walked free out of jail on last Friday after Putin signed a decree pardoning him.
The slew of early releases by Putin is said to be an attempt at placating the international chorus of criticism against Russia’s human rights record ahead of February`s Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Alyokhina and her band-mates were arrested in 2012 and jailed for two years for their protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow`s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
