It was a cold morning when I met Pussy Riot, in the basement of a bookstore not far from a subway station where a man waited for me by the stairs. He did not talk much on the way, his English was poor, my Russian non-existent. I was in Moscow for a story about the growing opposition movement which surprised ifself by not backing down. There were young journalists, activists, social workers, there was Masha Gessen, a sort of leading lady of the movement, author of a devestating book on Vladimir Putin which put the secret service and him square in the middle of at least two major terrorist attacks, the bombing of apartment houses in Moscow before the presidential election and the notorious hostage taking at the musical theater with hundreds of dead. What happened on the streets on these freezing days in January of 2012 was the manifestation of a civil society, they showed their pride, and they were happy and excited, a bit like children when their parents are out, but they knew, I am sure they knew that this was not going to last, that something was bound to happen. This is Russia, after all. I had been to Jean-Jacques where the hedonist opposition ate and drank bloody steaks and French wine, now I was in this basement with three girls in short dresses, pink, green, yellow, and masks over their faces. I did not know what to make of them, their English was also very poor, and the translator they had with them did not do a very good job. It would be an exaggeration to say that I was fascinated by them, more curious, also about the fact that you could tell which of them was good looking just by watching their mouths, their lips, their body language. I did not take a whole lot of notes. A few weeks later, I was already back in Berlin, Pussy Riot stormed into a church and did their thing. The protests faltered after a while, Pussy Riot was put on trial, three of them, they pay the price for everything that happened in these glorious weeks in Russia. On my next trip I met the husband of Nadeschda Tolokonnikowa, a lot of journalists think that he is a little dubious, that he is using his wife*s fame. I don*t know. They are young, what do you expect? He showed me pictures of Nadeschda with their daughter. I thought they were an odd couple, this scruffy young man and the so untouchably beautiful young woman, but I liked him. The whole trial was a scam, he was trying to do his best, I guess. And when I read today about Nadeschda protesting against the way she was treated in prison, how the female prisoners had to work up to 18 hours for a wage of about one Euro per month, how they were agitated to beat up any woman who was protesting against the harsh conditions, how Nadeschda was more or less threatened that she would not survive the last months of her two-year-sentence – I had to think back to the innocence of that encounter in the basement, the freedom that seemed possible then, the joy of just doing what they were doing, making fun of a society that takes everything deadly serious. Nadeschada Tolokonnikowa is a true hero of our time. May Putin rot in hell.