Russian security forces attack Pussy Riot members

Cossack militia attacked Russia's Pussy Riot punk group with horsewhips on Wednesday as the artists — who protested Vladimir Putin's government for years — tried to perform under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.

The feminist group has resurfaced in Russia this week for the first time in nearly two years, just as Putin had been using the Winter Games to burnish his image at home and charm critics abroad with the most expensive Olympics ever.

Six group members — five women and one man — donned their signature balaclavas in downtown Sochi and were pulling out a guitar and microphone as at least 10 Cossacks and other security officials moved in. One Cossack appeared to use pepper spray. Another whipped several group members while other Cossacks ripped off their masks and threw the guitar in a garbage can.

Police arrived and questioned witnesses, but no one was arrested.

The Cossacks violently pulled masks from women's heads and beat group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova with a whip as she lay on the ground.

The incident lasted less than three minutes and one Pussy Riot member, a man wearing a bright yellow tank top, was left with blood on his face, saying he had been pushed to the ground.

"They hit me all across my body, look at my bruises," Tolokonnikova said afterward.

Krasnodar region governor Alexander Tkachev, who has been advancing Cossacks' interests for years, promised on Wednesday to conduct a "thorough probe" into the incident and prosecute the attackers. Tkachev said in comments carried by the Interfax news agency that the views of Pussy Riot "are not supported by the majority of people in the region" but stressed the importance of abiding the law.

U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf on Wednesday criticized attacks on protesters in Russia but avoided specifically addressing the beatings of Pussy Riot members.

"We continue to support the rights of all Russians to exercise their fundamental freedoms of expression and assembly, as we say all the time, and of course condemn the use of violence against any protesters," Harf said.

Pussy Riot, a performance-art collective involving a loose membership of feminists who edit their actions into music videos, has become an international flashpoint for those who contend Putin's government has exceeded its authority, particularly restricting human and gay rights. They have called for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics.

The group gained international attention in 2012 after barging into Moscow's main cathedral and performing a "punk prayer" in which they entreated the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin, who was on the verge of returning to the Russian presidency for a third term.

Two members of the group, Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, were sentenced to two years in prison, but were released in December under an amnesty bill seen as a Kremlin effort to assuage critics before the Olympics.

The Associated Press