Do we like them?

Do we like Nadya Tolokonnikova?

Our score: 9 out of 10. She has spent more than a decade in the firing line for free speech, women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights, and the stains on her record are small.

Nadya Tolokonnikova is the Siberia-born co-founder of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk collective that became global news in 2012. The group staged a protest performance inside Moscow's main cathedral against Vladimir Putin, and she was jailed for two years afterwards. She didn't tone it down when she got out, and the whole career since has been one long poke at the Kremlin.

Russia has kept coming after her. In 2023 she was placed on the Interior Ministry's wanted list over an NFT artwork, and she answered with jokes rather than silence. In December 2025 a Moscow court declared Pussy Riot an extremist organisation, and she said the aim was “to erase the very existence of Pussy Riot from the consciousness of Russians”. This is a government punishing an artist, not an artist in trouble.

On the harm check, she comes up clean. Her UnicornDAO fund was set up to back art by women and non-binary artists, and a 2023 UK TV segment on LGBTQ+ rights in Russia featured her. I found nothing from her against trans people, migrants or the climate, and nothing that suggests she keeps harmful company. Coverage of her views on climate and health is thin, so that part of the record is quiet rather than proven.

The recent news is the same story with a new twist. In April 2026 Russia's Investigative Committee indicted her over the alleged breach of the foreign agent law, which carries up to two years in prison, and put her on the federal wanted list. She has been living in exile and kept working, and in June she put out CYKA, the group's first album.

The good stuff is real. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 she helped launch UkraineDAO, which raised almost $7 million in crypto in under a week for Ukrainian aid organisations. UnicornDAO also has a nonprofit arm that helps women and non-binary artists build careers in Web3. Her NFT fundraising has had its critics on how the money was run, but the aid it raised was real.

Not everything has been smooth. She took part in a 2015 photo shoot with Terry Richardson and cop some backlash for it, and said she hadn't known about his past. It reads as a lapse in judgment and not a pattern. Set against years of speaking out at personal cost, it barely dents the picture.