On Feb. 21, 2012 five members of the Russian feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot played a few songs on the soleas of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The group was protesting an Orthodox Church leader's support for Vladimir Putin's 2012 presidential campaign. That night the group had made their impromptu performance into a music video with the incendiary title "Punk Prayer -- Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!

Two of the women, 24-year-old Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and 25-year-old Maria Alyokhina, were arrested less than two weeks later and charged with hooliganism. The trial was swift and the two were convicted. A third member of the group was also arrested, but successful appealed their conviction and was set free.

After rotting away in prison for two years, including Tolokonnikova being moved to a Siberian Prison Colony to serve the end of her sentence, the two women could be released at any moment. The rockers' sentence expires in March 2014. While they will get out earlier than that, a December or January release still means that nearly the entire sentence was carried out. Sadly enough, the two women also have young children at home. Also set to be released are 30 members of Greenpeace and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who was once Russia's wealthiest man before he fell out of favor with Putin.

All this information came straight from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The series of announcements came earlier today during Putin's annual Moscow press conference. Still despite the welcome news, President Putin had some choice words for Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina.

"I feel sorry for Pussy Riot not for the fact that they were jailed, but for disgraceful behavior that has degraded the image of women," Putin said during his annual and wide-ranging televised news conference.

The Greenpeace and Pussy Riot releases have been interpreted as a measure to quell tensions with the West before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, held this February in Sochi, Russia. However, the American government and its Western European allies are still in a tiff over anti-gay laws passed this year by the Kremlin.

Do you expect Putin to ease up on the anti-gay laws? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.