A Russian Orthodox youth group unveiled a video game on Thursday that gives players a chance to “kill” members of the punk band Pussy Riot, whose profanity-laden protest in a Moscow cathedral last year angered the church and offended some believers.
Two women from Pussy Riot are serving two-year jail sentences for hooliganism for the “punk protest,” which the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called part of a campaign to curb its post-Soviet revival.
“You have to kill them with a cross before they get into the church, that’s the point,” said Boris Yakemenko, who organized a Russian Orthodox youth festival in central Moscow where the video game was on display.
“It’s revolting,” Dmitry Litvinov, 22, said of the game as he got up from the table where it was displayed on a flat-screen TV.
A legal representative of Pussy Riot declined to comment on the video game. Neither members of the band nor Russian Orthodox Church officials could immediately be reached for comment.
Players use a mouse to move a cross over the screen and zap colorful cartoon representations of the women from Pussy Riot — each with a balaclava like those worn by the band members in their protest — as they try to enter a white church.
When one of the brightly colored guitar-wielding band members gets there, a little red devil dances across the screen.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alyokhina, 25, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were sentenced to two years in prison in August last year for bursting into Christ the Savior Cathedral and belting out a song calling for the Virgin Mary to rid the nation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Samutsevich was freed on appeal.
Maria Voskresenskaya, who drew the cartoon figures for the game, suggested the members of Pussy Riot had opened themselves up to such treatment through their actions.
“We have problems in the church, we don’t deny it, but that doesn’t justify the actions of those girls — they made a mistake,” said Voskresenskaya.
The 24-year-old declined to say who came up with the idea for the game.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
RSS