Pussy Riot member freed in Russia

One of the jailed members of punk band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, has walked out of prison after receiving amnesty from a two-year sentence for a protest against President Vladimir Putin, her lawyer told Russian media.

"Maria Alyokhina walked out to freedom," lawyer Pyotr Zaikin told the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday. "All of the documents had been completed and signed."

Alyokhina and bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, whose two-year sentences for a protest performance in a Moscow church would have run out in early March, were granted amnesty last week.

Russian lawmakers last week approved a Kremlin-backed amnesty bill, which commemorates 20 years since Russia ratified its current constitution.

Alyokhina, 25, and Tolokonnikova, 24, were convicted of hooliganism for performing a crude "punk prayer" in a cathedral against Putin's ties to the Russian Orthodox church.

The two women had been due for release in March, but qualified for the amnesty proposed by Putin, in part because both are mothers of small children. A third band member had her sentence suspended earlier this year.

Lawyers say the amnesty will also enable 30 people arrested in a Greenpeace protest against Arctic oil drilling to avoid trial - removing an irritant in ties with the West before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in February.

Putin has said the amnesty was not drafted with the Greenpeace activists or Pussy Riot in mind.

Tolokonnikova's father Andrei told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that the planned release of the band members was clearly a public-relations move ahead of the Olympics.

"It is an absolutely cynical game of the central authorities," he said while awaiting her release from jail in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk.