When I met Maria “Masha” Alyokhina at the Borris festival earlier this summer, the Russian dissident and founding member of the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot wore a Ukrainian T-shirt showing the Kremlin in flames.

If she could, Alyokhina (38) really would burn down the Kremlin. “If I had a missile and I could fire it at Putin, I would do that,” she says, laughing.

In February 2012, in the run-up to Vladimir Putin’s third presidential election (of five so far), Pussy Riot filmed a performance art clip inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Wearing fluorescent balaclavas, they screamed lines that included “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out.”

For this they spent 22 months in Russian penal colonies. “The prison system is a legacy of the Soviet labour camps,” Alyokhina tells me over a video call this week. She speaks in the telegraphic style she used to write two memoirs, Riot Days and Political Girl. “People live in barracks, 100 people in each room. We sewed police and army uniforms. No medicine. No human rights. No complaints allowed. I spent four months in solitary confinement because I asked questions.”

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It is night-time and Alyokhina is somewhere in Montenegro, pacing around a shadowy apartment. She chain-smokes, has an impish smile and laces her conversation with laughter and expletives. A dog howls........

© The Irish Times