She spent nearly two years in a Russian penal colony for protesting against President Vladimir Putin, but it took almost another decade - and the invasion of Ukraine - before Maria Alyokhina reluctantly decided it was time to leave her country.
Alyokhina is a member of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot which outraged Russian authorities in 2012 by donning vivid-coloured balaclavas and belting out an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in front of the gold-framed icons of a Moscow cathedral.
