Former Pussy Riot Member Says Russia's FSB Pressured Her to Spy on Fellow Artists

A former member of Pussy Riot has said that Russia's FSB security service forcibly recruited her as an intelligence asset and pressured her for three years to spy on other contemporary artists, threatening to kill her family and arrange her forced disappearance.

Rita Flores, whose real name is Margarita Konovalova, made the claims in a video interview published on 24 August 2026 by Port Media, a site founded by Russian journalists in exile. Her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, conducted the interview in an undisclosed location (The Art Newspaper).

Flores said FSB agents searched her Moscow apartment, seized her telephone and laptop, and threatened her with prosecution over social media posts about the Russian massacre of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv. They wanted her to report on other artists, she said.

Among those the FSB targeted, according to Flores, were the street artist Philippenzo — real name Filipp Kozlov — and the performance artist Pavel Krisevich. Flores said she deliberately picked fights with both artists to avoid completing the assignments the FSB had given her. Philippenzo was forced to flee Russia in 2023 while facing up to three years in prison for anti-war graffiti. Krisevich fled in late 2025 after serving three and a half years in prison and being re-arrested multiple times (The Art Newspaper).

The most striking allegation: Flores claimed the FSB tasked her with luring Pyotr Verzilov, a founding member of Pussy Riot, to Serbia, where Russian agents would kidnap and kill him. She said the agency offered her up to 3 million rubles (about US$36,000) to carry out the plan. Verzilov has been officially designated a terrorist in Russia for joining Ukraine's military (The Art Newspaper).

Flores's path to this point began years earlier. She was first detained on 3 December 2020 in Moscow and charged with repeatedly violating laws on public gatherings, according to fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Alyokhina (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty). She was sentenced to 20 days in jail for staging an anti-police brutality protest (The Moscow Times). In July 2021 she was jailed again, this time for 20 days for disobeying a police officer (The Art Newspaper). Then, in February 2023, she disappeared after a police search of her Moscow apartment, according to fellow member Olga Borisova (Novaya Gazeta Europe).

It was after that disappearance that the FSB recruitment began, Flores said. She says the pressure lasted three years (Kyiv Independent).

In a subsequent Instagram post, Flores thanked Zakhvatov and the exiled Russian-Israeli businessman Leonid Nevzlin for saving her life by helping her leave Russia. She also wrote that she had attempted suicide several times.

Zakhvatov, who defended Pussy Riot members in Russia in 2020 and 2021, was sentenced in absentia by a Russian military court to 21 years in prison for supporting Ukraine's military. Russia's justice ministry designated him a "foreign agent" in 2025 — a legal label that restricts a person's activities and requires onerous public disclosures (The Art Newspaper).

The FSB has not publicly responded to Flores's claims. None of her allegations have been independently verified.