Despite the short nights since her release, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova seemed rested and combative when she sat down for a first lengthy interview with SPIEGEL last Friday. The conversation took place in a car, on the trip from Vnukovo International Airport into downtown Moscow. Her husband, Pyotr Verzilov, was sitting next to her. Tolokonnikova, 24, her fingernails painted a bright red, was in good spirits. Before long, she began talking about the "poor conditions in our prisons and our country as a whole."
She said that she bears no hatred against Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that she is determined to change the system he has created. Then the Pussy Riot activist began singing a few lines from a song she had written while in prison, in which she pokes fun at Putin's tendency to appear in photos that highlight the macho side of his personality.
"You're catching a fish, but I want rebellion," she sang. Before attending a press conference at the studio of opposition TV broadcaster Dozhd, she went to see her five-year-old daughter Gera, who had been living with Tolokonnikova's in-laws since her arrest.
