Pussy Riot strikes back in Sochi

After several tumultuous days that included police detentions, interrogations and a public flogging from angry Cossacks, the dissident punk band Pussy Riot struck back, CNN reported.

The controversial Russian musicians released an angry music video on Thursday slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on free speech and political expression. They also took aim at the Sochi Olympics' whopping $50 billion price tag.

Titled "Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Country," the music video included footage filmed Wednesday of Cossacks -- modern-day descendants of 19th-century horsemen who pushed the boundaries of the Russian empire -- flogging the women moments after they began lip-synching their song next to a large "Sochi 2014" sign in the Olympic city.

"The goal is to show what it's like to be a political activist in Olympic Sochi," Pussy Riot member Maria Tolokonnikova told CNN.

The band invited foreign media to a news conference at a hotel in Sochi for the unveiling of the new video on Thursday. But upon arrival, a bizarre scene unfolded.

An employee at the hotel informed journalists a conference room would not be available.

Outside, uniformed police and security officers in civilian clothes awaited the arrival of the band, alongside several dozen journalists.

Also waiting, at least five male university students accompanied by a man dressed in a giant chicken suit.

When four women from the band walked up, arms locked, the university students pulled out raw chickens and began chanting "We like sex with chicken" in mangled English.

The students and costumed chicken then attempted to disrupt the makeshift news conference given by the women in the park outside the hotel.

"We don't understand their behavior and that's why we're protesting," said 23-year old Sergei Barashov, one of the members of the anti-Pussy Riot demonstrators. Barashov said he was afraid the punk band would desecrate a Russian Orthodox cathedral that had been recently constructed on the outskirts of Sochi's Olympic Park.