Activists from the Ukrainian feminist group Femen cut down a wooden crucifix in the center of the country’s capital, Kiev, on Friday in support of members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot whose trial on hooliganism charges comes to an end today.

A video posted online showed a topless blond Femen protester wearing red shorts, with the words “Free Riot” scrawled across her chest and arms, cutting the cross with a chainsaw and then pulling it down using arope pulled by two other activists, and then posing with her arms extended crucifix-style.

The cross was put up on a high hill near Kiev’s downtown Independence Square during the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution to commemorate the victims of political repression under Joseph Stalin.

“By this act, Femen is calling on all the healthy forces of our society to mercilessly cut out of our brains the rotten religious prejudices which dictatorships rely upon and which prevent the development of democracy and women’s freedom,” the Segodnya daily quotedthe activists as saying. [...] http://en.rian.ru/society/20120817/175271764.html