Former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores has revealed that she was coerced into working as an informant for Russia’s FSB security service, saying that she gathered information on anti-war activists and was involved in a failed assassination plot against an exiled Kremlin critic.
Flores said FSB officers coerced her into signing a cooperation agreement following a February 2023 raid on her Moscow apartment, threatening her with criminal prosecution over social media posts about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine alongside death threats against her relatives.
“They began recruiting me with all kinds of threats and abuse [including] threats to murder my family and that I’d never be able to prove who killed my mother,” she told the exiled news outlet Port in a video interview.
Operating under the codename “Harley,” Flores said she was assigned to build detailed profiles on Russian artists and political dissidents. Between early 2024 and June, she received monthly payments of 50,000 rubles ($600) from her security service handlers after an initial disbursement of 30,000 rubles ($360).
Flores detailed how she deliberately sabotaged her FSB assignments for over two years, faking personal feuds with targets like artists Philippenzo and Pavel Krisevich to delay their arrest by law enforcement authorities.
