Maria Alyokhina participated in Greenpeace actions for rescuing the Bolshoi Utrish wildlife area from December, 2008 and protecting Lake Baikal and the Khimki Forest in 2009 and 2010. As an active volunteer of the charitable movement Danilovtsy and gave volunteer creative and development classes with patients of Children's Mental Hospital No. 6 in Moscow.

 

In 2006 Maria Alyokhina gave birth to her son Philip.

 

On February 21, 2012 Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich and two other, remaining anonymous members of the protesting Pussy Riot punk band performed a public prayer in Christ the Saviour Cathedral, where they sang: “Holy Mother, banish Putin!” The performance video was mounted and uploaded on YouTube. The feminine protesters were accused of hooliganism on the basis of religious animosity and in August of the same year Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony.

 

After over 1 year and 9 months of imprisonment Maria Alyokhina was released under an amnesty. Amnesty International called her the conscience prisoner due to “severity of reaction of the Russian power”.

 

As her moral guideline Maria Alyokhina pointed the dissident writer Vladimir Bukovsky, whose biography she got acquainted with while in the penal colony.

 

Upon her release Maria Alyokina has been into human rights activity jointly with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, her co-founder of the Zone of Right movement for protecting prisoners’ rights.