Pussy Riot - Jailed Russian Punk Star Opens Up About Life In Prison

Incarcerated Pussy Riot star Maria Alekhina spends 12 hours a day sewing in a workshop for $32 (£20) a month as she serves her two-year sentence for hooliganism.

The 24-year-old punk star and two of her bandmates were jailed in Russia this year (12) after being found guilty of hooliganism for performing a protest concert in a Moscow church.

Alekhina, who moved to a solitary cell at the Corrective Labour Colony No. 28 at her own request, has now opened up about prison life, revealing she spends her days in a workshop because her application to help out in the facility's library was rejected.

The star also details how the inmates sprint from their cells in order to gain access to washrooms before breakfast is served at 6am.

In an interview with Russia's The New Times magazine, she says, "I will have to run around constantly for the next one-and-a-half years. I am getting used to things."

Alekhina admits life behind bars is miserable, adding, "Everything around is grey. Even if something is another colour, all the same it has an element of grey. Everything: the buildings, food, the sky, words.

"It is an anti-life. Everything a prisoner does is to get a tick for early parole. They don't need personalities, they need people who have got used to things."

Alekhina's bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova remains behind bars, but Yekaterina Samutsevich was released on appeal in October (12).