SOCHI, Russia - Activists from the protest group Pussy Riot said that they were attacked on Wednesday outside a restaurant in Sochi by Cossacks wielding horsewhips and nightsticks.
In modern Russia, 'Cossack' generally refers to nationalist paramilitaries who adopt the style of the historic Cossack ethnic group from southern Russia and Ukraine. A number of Cossack paramilitaries have been deployed in the area of Sochi as auxiliary police officers for the 2014 Olympic Games.
Members of the group said in text messages that in addition to attacking them, the Cossacks pulled off their balaclava masks as they tried to perform and destroyed a guitar. Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of one of the group's members, said that several members of the group were being checked for injuries at a hospital.
The group arrived in Sochi on Sunday to record video footage for a new protest song called 'Putin Will Teach You To Love the Motherland,' and have had repeated encounters with the authorities since they arrived. Several members were detained by the local police on Tuesday and held for several hours for questioning in an investigation of the theft of a purse at the hotel where they were staying, a police official said.
Two members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, and Maria Alyokhina, 25, were released from prison in December, a few weeks early, after being given two-year prison sentences for hooliganism in connection with a protest song, 'God Get Rid of Putin,' that the group sang in a Moscow church in 2011.
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