MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has ordered Maria Alyokhina, a leading member of the punk protest band Pussy Riot, to perform 100 hours of community service for a protest against Russia's ban on the messaging app Telegram.
The court issued the ruling on April 18, two days after Alyokhina and other activists threw paper airplanes of different colors at the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Moscow's Lubyanka Square.
They were charged with violating regulations on public gatherings.
Telegram’s logo is a paper airplane.
Alyokhina and 11 other activists were detained at the site. Some of the detained activists were later fined, while others were still awaiting hearings.
Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor started blocking access to Telegram on April 16, following a court ruling against the popular messaging app last week.
The move to block Telegram -- which has met with mixed success -- has deepened concerns that the government is seeking to close avenues for dissent as President Vladimir Putin heads into a new six-year term.
Pussy Riot came to prominence in 2012, when Alyokhina and two other women were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a stunt in which band members burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral and sang a "punk prayer" against Putin, who was prime minister and was campaigning for his return to the presidency at the time.
Alyokhina and bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were close to the end of their two-year prison sentences when they were freed in December 2013, under an amnesty they dismissed as a propaganda stunt to improve Putin's image ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
