Ekaterina Samutsevich and her former lawyers Mark Feigin and Violetta Volkova discuss Samutsevich's suspended sentence.

At the first Pussy Riot trial, Yekaterina Samutsevich — like the other defendants — was represented by a well-known team of lawyers: Mark Feygin, Nikolai Polozov, and Violetta Volkova. Their defense strategy was built on the argument of political persecution, while rejecting the very premise that the women had committed “hooliganism”. However, during preparations for the appeal, Samutsevich unexpectedly dismissed the entire legal team, stating that they had failed to take into account the specific circumstances of her involvement in the action: she was removed from the cathedral by security before the main part of the performance began. Feygin himself later explained that “hooliganism” is considered a crime from the moment “she [Samutsevich] entered the cathedral,” and he claimed that Samutsevich had struck a police officer with a guitar and “resisted arrest,” being the only member of the group to do so. Samutsevich hired a new lawyer, Irina Khrunova, who built the appeal around this technical detail and convinced the court that her role was legally distinguishable from that of the other participants. In October 2012, the appeals court replaced Samutsevich’s prison sentence with a suspended one and released her directly from the courtroom, while Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina remained in penal colonies. Feygin argued that there were no legal grounds for her release (she had no children and no job) and suggested that Samutsevich had likely been “worked on” by a prison informant and agreed to admit guilt — something the other two refused to do. Afterward, rumors spread in the media and within the opposition community that Samutsevich had “cut a deal” with the authorities and “betrayed” the other members in order to gain her freedom. She denies this, insisting that her release was the result of a different legal strategy alone, and describing what happened as “the system’s sly maneuvering.”