Former Pussy Riot member says she was recruited by the FSB under threat of a criminal case

Former Pussy Riot member said how she was recruited by the FSB under threat of a criminal case

In an interview with Port, Rita Flores said that she helped the security services gather information on contemporary artists and political activists. They also tried to involve her in preparing an assassination attempt on Pyotr Verzilov.

According to her, FSB officers forced her to cooperate during searches of her apartment in February 2023.

It was all just like in the movies: we sat down at the table, I wasn’t allowed to move, I wasn’t allowed to look to the side. They started recruiting me: threatening me in every possible way, humiliating me, saying very unpleasant things, threatening to kill my family, and that I would never in my life be able to prove who killed my mother. Getting personal, saying how disgusting and horrible I was, that they would make me the biggest Satan in all of Russia,

Flores said.

She added that they also threatened her with criminal prosecution over posts about the killings in Bucha and hinted that she would “disappear without a trace” if she refused to cooperate.

As assignments, she wrote profiles of contemporary artists, including Pavel Krisevich, Maria Alyokhina, and Philippenzo, and informed on colleagues whose works contained “insults to the Motherland.”

She also said that at the start of her cooperation with the FSB, she was once paid 30,000 rubles in cash in an envelope. She only began receiving money from the security services regularly over the last few months, when she was paid 50,000 rubles on the 15th of each month. She received her last “salary” in June.

After her handlers suspected that she was deliberately dragging out the development of targets and losing ties with artists that interested them, they, according to her, decided to give her “the most radical assignment of all” — to help kill former Mediazona publisher and Voina and Pussy Riot art group member Pyotr Verzilov.

Under the FSB’s plan, the woman was supposed to lure Verzilov to Serbia, meet him in a cafe that “would be packed with FSB guys and bandits,” step outside on some pretext, and Verzilov would then be abducted and later killed. In exchange for help, her handlers offered Flores money — from 1 to 3 million rubles and higher.

After receiving this assignment, the woman contacted lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov and, with his help, convinced her handlers to “postpone” carrying it out. It was Zakhvatov who helped her leave Russia about ten days ago. He did not disclose the method by which this was done.

Photo: Rita Flores / X

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