Pussy Riot
Pussy Riot

The feminist punk collective Pussy Riot has released a music video targeting Russia's oil industry ahead of an appeal for the release of jailed member Maria Alyokhina.

The video, Like a Red Prison, was shot at Russian oil production sites and at a Rosneft filling station. As the video opens, a balaclava-clad woman is seen pouring oil on a portrait of the head of state oil company Rosneft, Igor Sechin.

Sechin, a former KGB spy, is known in parts of the Russian media as "Darth Vader" and "the scariest man on earth".

In their blog, Pussy Riot explains that Russia's revenues from the oil industry in 2012 amounted to 7 trillion rubles (£140bn) "but only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and several of his friends see it".

The song's lyrics refer to anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, who is a candidate for the post of mayor of Moscow, and French actor Gerard Depardieu, who became a Russian citizen in January 2013 in protest against heavy French taxes on the rich.

Pussy Riot said that jailed member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova contributed to the lyrics and that by focusing on the oil industry, the collective had "got to the essence of why our friends are in jail, and Putin's friends are not".

Ekaterina Samutsevich, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were jailed for two years in penal reform camps for hooliganism driven by religious hatred after performing a 40-second "punk prayer" in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Samutsevich was later freed with a suspended sentence on appeal.