Jailed members of Pussy Riot sent to prison camps in Siberia, Mordovia

Two members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have been sent to remote prison camps to serve their sentences, the group has said.

Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women’s prison camp in Perm, a Siberian region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union’s harshest camps. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons.

“These are the harshest camps of all the possible choices,” the band said via its Twitter account on Monday.

An unfortunate development for the two members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot that remain incarcerated, and its hard to see this as anything but an attempt at sending a message to those who oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin. Our thoughts are with Maria, Nadezhda and their families.