Member of Russian anti-Putin protest group Pussy Riot detained after entering Poland

Sep 7, 2025 | Law

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland has detained Aysoltan Niyazova, a member of Russian anti-Putin protest group Pussy Riot, after she entered the country from Lithuania. The authorities say they were required to do so as she is the subject of an Interpol red notice issued by Turkmenistan, and are now considering her extradition.

Niyazova, who is a Russian-Turkmen dual national, was taken into custody and placed in a detention centre on Saturday morning, according to Lucy Shtein, a fellow Pussy Riot member, who shared a video on social media of the incident.

Shtein noted that Niyazova was also detained in Croatia in 2022 under the same Interpol notice, before being released a week later. “They’ve been putting this person through this for years just because she’s the daughter of a Turkmen opposition figure,” she added.

Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, reports that Niyazova had come to Poland to collect a dog from a shelter. It says she has a Schengen area residence permit issued by Lithuania, from where she had entered Poland by car.

In normal times, there are no checks on Poland’s border with Lithuania. But the Polish government reintroduced them earlier this year as part of efforts to clamp down on illegal migration.

On Sunday, a Polish border guard spokeswoman confirmed to broadcaster TVN that Niyazova had been taken into custody.

“This woman’s details were entered in the Interpol database as someone who needed to be detained,” she explained. “She was detained and, in accordance with procedures, handed over to the police. They are now taking action.”

 

A spokesman for police in the city of Białystok, meanwhile, said that Niyazova’s case would be taken up by prosecutors. The local prosecutor’s office later told Gazeta Wyborcza that they were gathering evidence, interviewing the detainee, and expected to make a decision on extradition on Monday.

Pussy Riot told Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet founded by two of the group’s members, that Niyazova is facing “no legal charges” in Turkmenistan and that “her only ‘crime’ is openly opposing one of the most closed dictatorships in the world”.

“We demand her immediate release and call on Polish and European authorities not to extradite her to a regime known for torture, arbitrary detentions and persecution of dissidents,” wrote the group, which rose to international prominence in 2012 after staging a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

When Niyazova was previously detained in Croatia in 2022, Amnesty International was among the human rights groups that appealed for her not to be extradited to Turkmenistan, saying it would “put her at great risk of suffering serious abuse, including torture and other ill-treatment”.

Amnesty noted that “Interpol warrants have been notoriously abused by a number of authoritarian regimes”, including Turkmenistan’s, which issued its red notice against Niyazova in 2002, accusing her of embezzling funds belonging to the country’s central bank.

In 2011, Switzerland refused to extradite Niyazova to Turkmenistan but instead sent her to Russia, where she was sentenced to six years in prison for the same alleged embezzlement, reported the Moscow Times.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Igor Moukhin/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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