[Opinionated Blowhard]

You dont’ get two years in prison for stripping down to your underwear and dancing around the altar in a church. This was politically motivated. Just because we condemn the sentence doesn’t mean we approve of the way these women acted. I still view this as Putin’s Russia sending a message to the opposition.

[Cronos]

you do — it’s disrespect to the Church and is against the law in Russia.

[Antoninus]

You dont’ get two years in prison for stripping down to your underwear and dancing around the altar in a church.

Let me ask you something. If this had happened in a mosque in the US, what would their sentence have been? I'm guessing that the KosKidz would be calling for their heads and saying that 2 years in jail is getting off easy.

It's all a matter of priorities. In Russia, apparently, attacks on Christianity by hedonists are taken very seriously. Here, they are encouraged.

[piasa]

If that is what qualifies as the opposition, then the opposition is evil and deserves all it gets. I don't think they represent "the opposition," unless the opposition really doesn't believe in what we would call inalienable rights, and is radically homosexual, because that is what the gist of their "activism" is about. They could have conducted their "protest" a thousand other ways and numerous other places without violating the religious liberty and property rights of their fellow citizens.

It is no one's fault but their own that they chose the method which put them in conflict with the law, and now have to serve time. The sentence was appropriate, even mild: they could have gotten seven years but seven years' upkeep would be expensive. Maybe they can spend their two years learning some manners and sewing mittens in the prison shop, but as old as they are, they should already have learned how to respect fellow human beings and should already have found a useful occupation. Two years probably won't be enough for them to learn the difference between protesting and criminal behavior.

But at least they won't have to serve their time in a US jail, where they would learn nothing at all except how to game the system and lie for more sympathy.