[UPDATE: The missing members have been found. Perhaps the sudden media attention helped their situation. Pussy Riot posted on Twitter around 9 a.m. Monday, "We found Sasha and Olya. They were detained several times but safe now. Thank you for your help!"]
Due in St. Paul next month for the second show of its first North American tour, the Moscow-based anti-Putin feminist protest group Pussy Riot is claiming on Twitter that two of its members have gone missing after run-ins with a KGB-like police force in the Russia-annexed region of Crimea.
A post on the performance-art/punk-rock troupe's Twitter account says Olya Borisova and Sasha Sofeev – two of Pussy Riot's 11 members -- "disappeared in Crimea" on Monday. It claimed Russia's FSB (Federal Security Service) "detained them several times" and "broke their phones and computers."
"We don't know what has happened to them," the tweet concludes.
Two other members of Pussy Riot were infamously jailed in Moscow for almost two years starting in 2013 following such publicity stunts as a riotous "punk-rock prayer" in a church that lambasted Putin.
After giving their first U.S. performance last year in Los Angeles, the group announced a North American tour that was to kick off next Tuesday in Chicago. The second stop on the trek is supposed to be at the Turf Club in St. Paul on March 10, tickets for which have long been sold out. For now, let's hope the members turn up and everyone can turn out for the show.
