Photo Credit: Georgy Visnu

Russian punk activist group Pussy Riot is back, and as per usual, they’re not holding anything back. Out today with an accompanying music video filmed in Moscow, “Black Snow” is a pointed message demanding action against the pollution specifically in Russia. “i visited Eden yesterday, where only oligarchs live / there’s no smog, there’s no death, every newborn gets a Maybach / Putin’s building himself a bunker in the depths of the Altai mountain / i’m sticking underground, i’m suffocating under a collapsed mine” Nadya Tolokonnikova cries out in the track, as the video displays the group in various states of environmental crisis that go unresolved. Accompanying images show the group partaking in guerilla actions in Russian forests (between January-March 2019), hanging banners between trees with slogans such as “We need a new earth,” “Eat the rich,” and “Red water flows in the Russian rivers”

A response to the horrifying levels of pollution near Nadya’s hometown of Norilsk — a northern city in Russia built Stalin’s prison camps and slave labor that is extremely polluted due to nickel extraction/smelting– the track comes with an open letter to Vladimir Putin himself, demanding responsibility for his corruption that has kept such areas in such a state of environmental disaster. In part, the letter reads,

“To Putin and his cronies,

including Potanin, Prokhorov, Deripaska, and Abramovich,

Hey hey, it’s Nadya Tolokonnikova.

You might remember me for that 2-year prison sentence you slapped me with back in 2012, when performed a 40-second act of protest and beseeched the Virgin Mary to chase you away. I was 22 at the time, and my young daughter Gera had just turned four. But right now I’m not interested in talking about church or prison – I want to talk about a different issue. I want to talk about rivers of blood, black snow, toxic waste, and acid rain.

You fill the Russian North with unprocessed garbage (see Shiyes and 10 million tons of Moscow waste). You criminalize ecological activists (see 5 new cases against Alexandra Koroleva, the co-chair of Ecodefense!). Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Kuzbass are forced to seek environmental asylum in Canada to escape intolerable living conditions, high rates of oncological illness, black snow, poisoned water, and the indifference of local government officials. People in Kuzbass ask: “How can you be a patriot of something or someone who won’t even notice how we live? How we breathe? What we drink?” Listen, this is just completely unacceptable…

… Vladimir Potanin’s fortune – $19 billion – was built by the labor of people forced to live in one of the dirtiest cities in the world. By some accounts, the amount of toxic waste in Norilsk exceeds even Chernobyl…

…Rosprirodnadzor allowed Nornickel to control its own atmospheric emissions. LOL. This isn’t corruption, it’s a “unique public-private partnership,” you’ll say. In response to citizens’ complaints, the corporation will say: If you don’t like it, then don’t work. Nornickel doesn’t give a shit. No one has greater protection than Nornickel. For example, when the Daldykan river in Norilsk turned blood red, Nornickel only paid a modest sum of 30,000 rubles…

Corporations, especially those that use natural resources, cannot exist with public control. Each of us should be able to see and influence what is happening in these corporations. The decisions made by corporations like Nornickel don’t just affect Potanin, Abramovich, Deripaska, or Putin – they affect me, you, some guy, and the kids and grandkids of that guy. Toxic emissions don’t dissolve – they accumulate and cause mutations in humans and animals alike, and they will lead to irreversible environmental catastrophe.

I’m not suggesting that we immediately close all factories, but the way I see it – humanity has two options. Either we leave things as they are and we just die out, turning our planet into Chernobyl and Norilsk. Or we figure out how to build a technologically advanced civilization that uses renewable energy sources for its industries.

The lack of corporate control is not a uniquely Russian problem – activists all over the world are calling on corporations to take responsibility for their actions. But in Russia, the corporations are especially heinous because of the hellish corruption in the country. The rule of law doesn’t apply to corporations. But what we can do is take power into our own hands – this takes a certain level of arrogance. We need to act like we have already won – we need to act like we live in a clean Russia of the future, where we elect and be elected, where the media is free and independent, where we can create autonomous environmental watchdogs, where we can support Great Thunberg and “Fridays for Future,” where we can go outside and be organic kittens.

I love you – but I don’t love Putin.  

xx Nadya”

You can read the full open letter HERE, which includes images of the extreme levels of pollution.

Meanwhile, on Thursday 7/11, the group will be performing in Birmingham, Alabama to protest the state’s restrictive abortion laws. The show has no confirmed venue yet, but will benefit Planned Parenthood and the Yellowhammer Fund. You can watch the video flyers for the show HERE and HERE.