On Wednesday afternoon, the Moscow Court of appeals heard the appeal against the Pussy Riot members' verdict. The court lessened punishment for Yekaterina Samutsevich, one of the band's members, from a prison sentence to suspended sentence, Gazeta.ru reports from the courtroom.

However, the court upheld the 2.5 year sentence for the two other Pussy Riot members, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
Samutsevich's new lawyer, Irina Khrunova, urged the court to consider her client's actions separately.

"Samutsevich's actions differ from other Pussy Riot members' actions in the Cathedral," Khrunova said. "She only passed through the altar cordons and took her guitar when the security guards threw her off the stage. She did not pray, or jump, or shout out slogans that could have hurt the feelings of believers," she added.

The judge ruled that Samutsevich's sentence should be suspended because she was thrown out of the cathedral by guards before she could take part in the punk prayer.

Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, is the eldest of the three convicted Pussy Riot members. Earlier, she refused the work with her former lawyer, Violetta Volkova, claiming that their positions on the case "differed."