PUSSY RIOT ON TRIAL FOR MOSCOW CATHEDRAL PERFORMANCE OF ANTI-PUTIN SONG

Punk band Pussy Riot facing 7 years in prison for Anti-Putin song performed on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

At the opening of their trial on charges of inciting religious hatred, three young women who performed a crude anti-Putin song on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior said on Monday that they were prepared to take responsibility for “an ethical mistake.” But they denied the formal criminal accusations read aloud by prosecutors.

Facing up to seven years in prison if convicted, the three women, members of a punk band called Pussy Riot, said they intended no offense to Orthodox Christians with their profane performance, which they described as a political demonstration.

“We just were not thinking that our action would be offensive to someone,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, said in a statement read by her lawyer, Violetta Volkova. Ms. Tolokonnikova was held in a glass-enclosed box, along with her co-defendants, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, throughout the daylong proceedings in a downtown courtroom.

“If someone was offended by our performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, I am ready to recognize that we committed an ethical mistake,” Ms. Tolokonnikova told the judge in her handwritten statement. “This is exactly the error, since we did not have the conscious intention to offend anyone.”

The criminal trial of the young musician-activists has become a touchstone in the Russian capital, which is still trying to come to grips with the ramifications of the big street protests that preceded and followed Vladimir V. Putin’s election in May to a third term as president.

The case has become a measure of the Kremlin’s resolve in squelching political dissent expressed in unapproved settings. It has also put three very human and, in many ways, sympathetic faces on the political opposition movement.

Flanked by police officers and armed special forces troops, the three women hardly cut the image of dangerous criminals. Ms. Samutsevich seemed dazed and stared off into space as her father, sitting in the courtroom, signaled to her to listen to the judge. Ms. Tolokonnikova, who has a 4-year-old daughter, traded concerned glances with her husband.

The case has thrown a spotlight on the increasingly close relationship between the government and the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, which has positioned itself, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to become a potent political force.