The cover of "Pussy Riot!", the e-book created to help support the band's legal defense team.

On March 3, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina - both women in their early twenties - were charged with hooliganism and sentenced to two years in jail after staging an illegal performance at Moscow's Cathedral the Christ the Saviour in February.

Chased away by church officials, the group turned the performance into a music video entitled, "Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!" 

A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was arrested on March 16.

Following an appeal, Samutsevich was granted release on probation. Her two confederates have not fared as well. 

Lawyers for Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina have described the penal colonies to which the women have been exiled as "the harshest camps of all possible choices."

Perm, Siberia and Modovia were both sites for labor and prison camps during the Stalin era, with unbearable winter temperature lows of minus 50 degrees Celsius and conditions the New York Times has described as "notoriously harsh." 

Pussy Riot is an all-female band consisting of an estimated 12 members, most of whom retain anonymity due to their donning of balaclavas and nicknames during both performances and media interviews.

They gained notoriety for staging bold, unannounced performances of provocative political-themed music in unconventional public spaces, such as on a scaffold on the Moscow Metro and in the Red Square, all the while sporting colorful clothing to create the image of "superheroes seizing public space in Moscow."

Hours after her release, Samutsevich had a message for the press.

"We are not finished, nor are we going to end our political protest," she told CNN, vowing to continue the activity that had led to her imprisonment.

"My values and views did not change. They have even strengthened as everything that I thought of people and society was confirmed," the activist told Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru. "We understood for sure that everything might end up like this."

In August, Putin commented that while he thought there was "nothing good" about the protest, the band should not be judged too harshly. He added, however, that it would be up to the court to make a decision. 

As the Guardian reported on Tuesday,"The arrest and trial of Pussy Riot was seen as a barometer of the direction in which Russia under Putin is moving."  

Reach Assistant News Editor Michelle Toh here.