Ex-Pussy Riot member reveals three years as an FSB informant

Rita Flores, a 29-year-old Russian artist and former member of the Pussy Riot collective, has gone public with details of a three-year period during which she was coerced into cooperating with Russia's FSB security service. She first disclosed the arrangement in a video conversation with her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, released shortly after she left Russia at the end of August, and has since given her first media interview since leaving the country.

According to Flores, she was recruited in February 2023 after a police search of her home, when two men identified themselves as FSB officers. They threatened to open a criminal case over an Instagram post criticising Russian actions in Ukraine, and suggested her mother could be harmed if she refused to sign cooperation documents. Fearing for herself and her family, she signed and received a one-off cash payment.

From surveillance to a kidnapping plot

Her early tasks involved gathering information on fellow opposition-minded artists. She was handled by two FSB officers — a senior man she nicknamed "the Jacket" and a junior officer named Ivan, who alternated between friendliness and veiled threats. As many protest-minded artists left Russia, the number of targets to report on dwindled.

Last May, her handlers began asking about Pyotr Verzilov, a former Pussy Riot associate now living in Ukraine and fighting with its army. Flores said she was asked to obtain his address and use their old friendship to arrange a meeting in Serbia, where she claims an FSB squad intended to kidnap and kill him.

Meanwhile, Flores secretly planned her escape, including marrying her partner partly as a pretext to avoid the Serbia assignment. With her lawyer's help, she eventually left Russia, though both declined to detail the escape method for security reasons. Since leaving, she has expressed a wish to help others in similar situations.