Pussy Riot protester Nadezhda Tolokonnikova released on amnesty from Siberian prison hospital

The pair were imprisoned for a Moscow cathedral protest stunt about the Orthodox church's alleged close relationship with Vladimr Putin, the Russian president. Their sentence of two years was lambasted in the West as harsh but many Russians, according to polls,  agreed they had insulted the church and saw their punishment as appropriate. 

Today, within hours of each other, the women, who both have small children, were released under an amnesty agreed by the Russian parliament last week.

Their prison sentences have turned the women - especially Tolokonnikova - into internationally recognisable figures, with far higher profiles than when the legal action was commenced against them for the anti-Putin stunt in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. 

Tolokonnikova, 24, left a jail hospital in Krasnoyarsk, shouting 'Russia without Putin'.

She had been moved here after complaining of a threat to her life and harsh labour conditions in her previous prison in Mordovia, south-east of Moscow. 

Alyokhina, 25, was the first to speak, saying she would travel east to Krasnoyarsk to meet her co-singer, while also claiming that the amnesty was a PR stunt. 

It coincides with the release of former oil baron Mikhail Khordokovsky, who served much of his decade-long sentence in souther Siberia. 

Like him, the two singers were cited in the West as 'political prisoners', a label strongly denied by the Russian authorities. 

'I don't think it's an amnesty, it's a profanation,' said Alyokhina, saying the release applied to only a few inmates.

'I don't think the amnesty is a humanitarian act, I think it's a PR stunt. If I had a choice to refuse (the amnesty), I would have done.'

Yelena Pimonenko, senior aide to the Krasnoyarsk region prosecutor, said: 'Tolokonnikova is released because the hooliganism clause fits the amnesty, and not because she is a mother of an underage child.'

Her husband Pyotr Verzilov said: 'Two months out of the almost two years that the girls have served is not much. So the effect of this amnesty for Maria and Nadezhda is not really felt'.