Ex-Pussy Riot member says FSB coerced her into three years of informing on Russian artists and activists, then told her to help kidnap and kill Pyotr Verzilov

Former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores (real name Margarita Konovalova) said she began cooperating with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2023, helping the agency gather information on contemporary artists and political activists, including members of Pussy Riot.

Flores described her work for the FSB in an interview with defense attorney Dmitry Zakhvatov, who helped her leave Russia. The outlet Port published both a video and a written summary of the interview.

She met an FSB officer named Ivan — the man who would become her handler — after agents searched her apartment on February 17, 2023. At the time, she was reported to have gone missing after the search. While others searched for her, she was at home with two FSB officers, who coerced her into cooperating. They threatened her with criminal prosecution, said they would kill her relatives, and warned that she herself would “disappear without a trace” if she refused to work for them.

The FSB gave Flores the code name “Harley,” began training her “as an agent,” confiscated all of her documents except her internal Russian passport, and issued her a “work” phone.

Her main job for the FSB was to flag artworks that could give the agency grounds to begin targeting their creators and to compile a “report” on someone the agency planned to prosecute. In that report, she was to lay out the person’s background, relatives and close contacts, habits, and vulnerabilities.

Flores said she took part in the FSB’s targeting of street artist Filipp Kozlov, who works under the name Philippenzo; performance artist Pavel Krisevich; and fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina. She said the FSB also tried to enlist her in the kidnapping and murder of Pyotr Verzilov, Mediazona’s former publisher and a member of the art groups Voina and Pussy Riot.

After being handed the Verzilov assignment, Flores contacted Zakhvatov. With his help, she persuaded her handlers to “postpone” the job, then fled the country. Neither she nor Zakhvatov would say how she got out. Flores got in touch with him in the summer of 2025, Zakhvatov said, and she was brought out of Russia about 10 days ago.

Flores said she decided to go public about her work for the FSB to help others in similar situations. On Instagram, she thanked Zakhvatov and former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin for their help, saying the two men had “saved her ass and her soul.”

Philippenzo responded to Flores’ statements by sending Meduza an image of a 2017 painting of his that was seized during searches of his studio in 2023.

Caution. The image below contains Russian profanity that translates roughly to (okay, you’ve been warned…): “He who spies sucks dick.”