All members of the punk group Pussy Riot are officially free. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were released from prison on 23 December 2013 following the approval of an amnesty by the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, on 19 December. The two musicians would have finished serving their sentence in March 2014.

Pussy Riot had been charged with violent and outrageous behaviour in February 2012, when they entered the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and performed at the church's altar with a song whose chorus called for the downfall of the Russian president: "Madonna, rid us of Putin." The third member of the group, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had been released on 10 October 2012 because the defence had managed to prove that at the moment of the police raid on the church her guitar was still in its case.

"This amnesty is not a humanitarian act, but a farce. If I could have refused it, I would have," declared Alyokhina. According to many analysts, this release is in fact an attempt by Vladimir Putin to avoid international criticism over Russia's failure to respect human rights, ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi to be held in February 2014.

Two other amnesty cases are also said to be part of Putin's strategy: the release of the Greenpeace activists, arrested on 18 September 2013 for attempting to board the Gazprom-owned Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Arctic Sea, and that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The oligarch and political opponent of Putin had been formally arrested for theft, fraud and money laundering in 2003 while he was at the helm of the oil giant Yukos. In reality, his case is internationally regarded as political, as his arrest is believed to have been ordered by Putin in order to eliminate him from electoral competition.