Pussy Riot Members To Appear On US TV's The Colbert Report

The famously jailed members of Russian musical activist collective Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, will this week appear on US cable show The Colbert Report.

It is the pair's first visit to the US since being released from prison, having been sentenced to two years each for "hooliganism".

In December, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova announced they were no longer Pussy Riot and instead would concentrate their efforts on fighting for human rights for those held in Russian penal colony system. The collective has been rumoured to have fallen out over an attempt to trademark the Pussy Riot name and internal power struggles.

The former Riot women's main reason for travelling to the States is to appear at Amnesty International's Bringing Human Rights Back Home concert, alongside The Flaming Lips, Imagine Dragons, Lauryn Hill, Tegan & Sara, Blondie, Cold War Kids and Yoko Ono on February 5.

The Russians will appear on Tuesday night's edition of the cult political satire show The Colbert Report (screening in Australia at 7.30pm Wednesday on Comedy Channel). Appearances on the show are notoriously awkward for musicians and cultural icons alike, as host Stephen Colbert poses as a neo-conservative with an agenda to prove all left-leaning types are wrong. With English as second language, the Pussy Riot appearance is fraught with awkward possibilities.

At this point it is their only scheduled US TV appearance during their visit.

Past Colbert celebrity interviews included Jack White trying to get the host to discuss his new record: