Today Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich’s two-year prison sentence was suspended. At the hearing, the three Pussy Riot members reminded their country and indeed the world that the protest was political, not anti-religious. That said, free speech should also protect religious criticism as well.

The Russian government and the country’s Orthodox Church attempted and succeeded at crafting the protest into “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” It worked well both in trial and in the general Russian public opinion.

According to the BBC, Samutsevich’s lawyers argued that she was thrown out of the church before she could remove her guitar from its case. Great news for her, of course, but not so good news for the other two Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22. They clearly weren’t able to use a similar argument, but perhaps international and domestic pressure will eventually help in freeing the girls.

Samutsevich’s freedom does nevertheless serve as a partial victory for Russian protest. But Vladimir Putin’s comments last week demonstrate the state power the two remaining members are up against, when he said: ”It’s right that they were arrested, it’s right that the court took that decision, because you can’t undermine the foundations of morality, our moral values, destroy the country. What would we be left with then?”

Sounds a lot like fascism now, doesn’t it?