The Russian punk band Pussy Riot has just released a new music video lampooning the country's prosecutor-general, Yuri Chaika.
The prosecutor-general, who is supposed to be one of Russia's top crime fighters, has been accused of massive corruption. The song revels in it.
The video opens with a woman in a prosecutor's uniform gorging on a roast turkey, which she tears apart with her bare hands.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the founders of the Pussy Riot protest collective, raps a kind of Russian primer for how to get ahead via corruption: "Be humble, learn to obey, don't worry about material stuff," she says. "Be loyal to those in power, 'cause power is a gift from God, son."
Then, after prancing in front of a group of hanged, hooded figures, she and a line of uniformed dancers show how to get rid of the competition. "First, the cops will pull you in for questioning," she raps while another dancer wraps duct tape around a hooded figure in a chair. "Then it'll look like an accident. You'll be fed to the fish."
Chaika's name is the Russian word for seagull, and the video rubs it in with winglike gestures, a female prosecutor figure wearing a seagull mask and a giant, two-headed seagull emblem that mimics Russia's iconic double-headed eagle.
The accusations against Chaika erupted last month in a lengthy documentary by opposition blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who accused the prosecutor-general of using his power to enrich his sons and cover up their connections to underworld figures.
The documentary has garnered more than 4.5 million views on YouTube.
Chaika angrily denies the allegations, saying that they were instigated by Western intelligence agencies and William Browder, an American financier.
Browder, who claims that his Russian assets were stolen in a tax scam by government officials, was instrumental in getting U.S. sanctions imposed on top Russian officials as part of the Magnitsky Act. Browder's lawyer in the tax case was Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested on tax fraud charges and died in prison in 2009, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment.
A top Kremlin spokesman has said that the Russian government isn't interested in the accusations against Chaika's sons. Earlier this week, the government announced that the prosecutor-general himself would be in charge of investigating the allegations.
According to Time magazine, the new Pussy Riot video was stealthily filmed at locations around Moscow, and in one case, the collective convinced the owners of a venue that they were part of a law-enforcement convention.
It's not clear whether the music video will provoke any official reaction. Tolokonnikova and her colleague Maria Alyokhina already served nearly two years in prison for a previous protest. They were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for filming in a Moscow cathedral as part of a 2012 music video critical of President Vladimir Putin.
As part of the chorus in the new video, Tolokonnikova — channeling Chaika — sings: "I love Russia. I am a patriot." In today's Russia, that's become a common refrain from those accused of crimes.
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