The outcome was exactly what had been feared. On Friday, a Moscow district court found three members of the punk band Pussy Riot guilty. They were each sentenced to two years in prison. It was a verdict that surely would not have been delivered against the will of President Vladimir Putin. 
 
 The public debate in Russia over the handling of the three musicians -- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina -- was passionate and controversial. Writers, artists and intellectuals expressed their solidarity with the defendants. 
 
 The trial drew no shortage of criticism on the uncensored radio station Echo Moskvy, which is sympathetic to the opposition, and other radio stations, as well as in daily and weekly newspapers. The debate was a far cry from what would have been the case in a totalitarian society. Compared to the Soviet Union of the 1980s, a state without freedom of speech or freedom of travel, today's Russia has come a long way. 
 
 That, however, is little consolation in the light of current events in Moscow. Russia's powerful seem to be unaware of the degree to which the politicized trial of Pussy Riot is a symptom of the deep crisis that currently afflicts Russian society. 
 
 Doing Themselves a Disservice 
 
 It was inevitable that the stunt by the punk band in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior would provoke objections. By entering the altar space and insulting the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church as a "suka" ("bitch") in their song, the band hurt the feelings of many believers. 
 
 The performance, with its "blasphemous words which insult Christians," had deeply shocked "the faithful of all religious communities," read a statement by the Interreligious Council of Russia, which was also signed by the Federation of Jewish Communities. 
 
 Some Orthodox Christians also separately called for the activists to be severely punished. One arch-abbot even went so far as to write, in a Moscow weekly paper, that "the country will go under if you do not punish profanity." 
 
 The court has now ruled that the three women had been "motivated by religious enmity and hatred." But those in power seem not to understand that the Church and state are doing themselves a disservice by locking up the three young women, two of whom are mothers of small children. 
 
 Rejecting Corruption and Abuse of Power 
 
 The judgment against Pussy Riot will likely not only cause problems for Russia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Above all, the hope of those in power that the judgment will contribute to the stability of society could prove to be a false belief. The trial has divided Russian society deeper than any other incident in the Putin era. 
 
 There were voices that called for moderation during the legal proceedings even from within the ruling United Russia party. The leader of a United Russia district party organization in Putin's home city of St. Petersburg wrote a sympathetic letter to the three defendants saying that, even though their stunt had been "bad," the threatened punishment was completely unreasonable. "I am sure," he added, "that the majority of my party colleagues think the same way." 
 
 That means that, despite the authoritarian tendencies of supposedly strong men, Russia will not become a totalitarian regime again. And the closing argument of defendant Maria Alyokhina, who said that "Russia as a state" has for a long time resembled "a thoroughly diseased organism," reflects an opinion that is shared by many state officials, even including longtime colleagues of Putin's in the security services. There, too, there is opposition to policies that have allowed corruption and abuse of power to grow. 
 
 'War and Blood' 
 
 The opposition Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov, who like Putin is a KGB veteran, is one of those who are calling for the rule of law in the parliament and at opposition rallies. Gudkov is not a revolutionary, but a moderate social democrat. 
 
 The powers-that-be reacted harshly to Gudkov's criticism. A company he founded was shut down and several hundred employees lost their jobs. Now the Moscow authorities want to impeach him for "illegal business activity" and even strip him of his parliamentary immunity. 
 
 By turning basically harmless artists into criminals, the regime has transformed the trial against Pussy Riot into a political time bomb. With its hard line against the oppositional civil society, the state is conjuring up a scenario that Olga Allyonova, a journalist with the liberal Moscow newspaper Kommersant, warned of in March. 
 
 If a hard line drives the opposition to "hate and malice," Allyonova wrote, it will not lead to peace, a just social order or an honest state power. Instead, she concluded, "it will lead to revolution and to war and blood." ||||| Editor's note: Rachel Denber is deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. 
 
 Moscow (CNN) -- There is no basic human right to barge into a church to make a political statement, jump around near the altar, and shout obscenities. But there is most certainly the right not to lose your liberty for doing so, even if the act is offensive. 
 
 But that is exactly what happened Friday. A court in Moscow sentenced the three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to two years in prison. 
 
 In my two decades monitoring human rights in Russia I've never seen anything like the Pussy Riot case -- the media attention, the outpouring of public support, the celebrity statements for the detained and criminally charged punk band members. 
 
 The image of three young women facing down an inexorable system of unfair justice and an oppressive state has crystallized for many in the West what is wrong with human rights in Russia. To be sure, it is deeply troubling. 
 
 For me, even more shocking were the images of Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, lying on the sidewalk with the back of his head blown off in 2009, or the body of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison in 2009 after he blew the whistle on a massive government extortion scheme. 
 
 The Pussy Riot case shines a much needed, if highly disturbing, spotlight on the issue of freedom of expression in post-Soviet Russia 
 
 On February 21, four members of the group performed what they call a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior Cathedral. They danced around and shouted some words to their song, "Virgin Mary, Get Putin Out." The stunt lasted less than a minute before the women were forcibly removed. 
 
 The same day, a video widely shared on social media showed a montage of the stunt with the song spliced in. The song criticizes the Russian Orthodox Church's alleged close relationship with the Kremlin and the personally close relationship of President Vladimir V. Putin with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. 
 
 Three of the band members were tried on criminal "hooliganism" charges. Their trial was theater of the absurd. In their closing statements, the women and their lawyers delivered devastating critiques of the state of justice and civic freedoms in Russia. 
 
 During the Soviet era, the human rights landscape in Russia was stark. But since then the situation has been harder to figure out, often making it easier for outsiders simply to give the government a pass. But the devil is in the details. 
 
 It has been incredibly difficult to pin down any involvement of officials in the beatings and murders of investigative journalists and human rights activists. And the government, while not silencing civil society groups outright, tries to marginalize, discredit, and humiliate them, and crush them with heavy-handed bureaucracy, trumped-up accusations, threats and the like. 
 
 Whatever misdemeanor the three women incurred for their antics in the church should not have been transformed by the authorities into a criminal offense that in effect punishes them for their speech. It's typical, though, of how the authorities try to keep a lid on controversial issues. The Russian think tank SOVA has documented dozens of cases in recent years in which the authorities used the threat of extremism charges to silence critics. 
 
 This also isn't the first time Russian authorities have misused criminal legislation to stifle critical artistic expression. In 2010 a Moscow district court found the co-organizers of a controversial art exhibit guilty of the vague charge of "inciting religious hatred." The art exhibit organizers were fined. 
 
 By making the Pussy Riot band members await trial in jail for almost six months, the authorities made clear how they plan to set boundaries for political criticism. 
 
 After a winter of unprecedented, peaceful opposition protests, a dozen demonstrators whom the authorities claim were involved in a scuffle with police during a mass demonstration in May have been arrested and are being charged with crimes grossly disproportionate to their alleged actions. Police have searched opposition leaders' homes. 
 
 Laws rammed through Russia's parliament this summer sent more signals: criminal liability for leaders of nongovernmental organizations for "serious breaches" of new restrictive regulations; much tougher sanctions for violating rules on public assembly; and new restrictions on the Internet that could easily shut down big social networking sites. Critics of the Kremlin have been subject to vicious harassment, intimidation and grotesque public smear campaigns. 
 
 For years Russian human rights defenders have tried to draw attention to the lack of independence of the courts. With the unprecedented attention to the Pussy Riot trial, the surreal state of justice when political interests are at stake is there for all to see. What we really should be wondering isn't why Pussy Riot is so distinctive, but whether it's just the tip of the iceberg. 
 
 Too often, foreign governments have resorted to wishful thinking about the direction Russia is heading. Talking about human rights at a high level -- where all things in Russia are decided -- is unpleasant business. It might be hard, but Russia won't respect other governments if they shy away. 
 
 If three women in the defendants' cage had the courage to speak out about where Russia is headed, surely members of the international community should too. They, at least, won't be thrown in jail. 
 
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 The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rachel Denber. ||||| Members of the female punk band ''Pussy Riot'' (R-L) Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina sit in a glass-walled cage after a court hearing in Moscow, August 17, 2012. 
 
 MOSCOW | 
 
 MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail on Friday for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a church, a ruling supporters described as his "personal revenge". 
 
 The group's backers burst into chants of "Shame" outside the Moscow courthouse and said the case showed Putin was cracking down on dissent in his new six-year term as president. Dozens were detained by police when scuffles broke out. 
 
 The United States and the European Union condemned the sentence as disproportionate and asked for it to be reviewed, although state prosecutors had demanded a three-year jail term and the maximum sentence possible was seven years. 
 
 But while the women have support abroad, where their case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting, opinion polls show few Russians sympathize with them. 
 
 "The girls' actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church's rules," Judge Marina Syrova told the court as she spent three hours reading the verdict while the women stood watching in handcuffs inside a glass courtroom cage. 
 
 She declared all three guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow's main cathedral in February to belt out a "punk prayer" deriding Putin. 
 
 Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, giggled as the judge read out the sentences one by one, but portrayed themselves as victims of Soviet-style persecution during the trial that began on July 30. 
 
 They have already been in jail for about five months, meaning they will serve another 19, and could be released if Putin were to pardon them. The Orthodox Church hinted it would not oppose such a move by appealing, belatedly, for mercy. 
 
 Pussy Riot took on two powerful state institutions at once when they burst into Moscow's golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts to protest against Putin's close ties with the Church. 
 
 The judge said the three women had "committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society." She rejected their argument that they had no intention of offending Russian Orthodox believers. 
 
 It became one of Russia's most high-profile trials since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Putin's critics said it put the 59-year-old Kremlin leader's policies in the dock. 
 
 Opponents depicted it as part of a crackdown by the ex-KGB spy against a protest movement that took off over the winter, attracting what witnesses said were crowds of up to 100,000 people in Moscow to oppose his return to power. 
 
 "They are in jail because it is Putin's personal revenge," Alexei Navalny, one of the organizers of the protests, said outside the court. "This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin." 
 
 A police source told Itar-Tass news agency 50 people had been detained near the court when scuffles broke out. Among them were Sergei Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader, and Garry Kasparov, a Putin critic and former world chess champion. 
 
 But there was no sign of the opposition taking to the streets in anger. Opposition leaders plan a small gathering in Moscow on Sunday, the anniversary of a failed coup shortly before the Soviet Union fell in 1991, but the next big anti-Putin rally is not planned until September 15. 
 
 Putin's spokesman did not immediately comment on the verdict but the president's supporters said before the trial that he would have no influence on the court's decision. 
 
 Although Pussy Riot have never made a record or had a hit song, foreign singers have led the campaign for the trio's release. Madonna performed in Moscow with "PUSSY RIOT" painted on her back and wearing a ski mask in solidarity. 
 
 But a poll of Russians released by the independent Levada research group showed only 6 percent sympathized with the women and 51 percent found nothing good about them or felt irritation or hostility. The rest could not say or were indifferent. 
 
 Valentina Ivanova, 60, a retired doctor, said outside the courtroom: "What they did showed disrespect towards everything, and towards believers first of all." 
 
 CHURCH CALLS FOR MERCY 
 
 Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term on May 7 after a four-year spell as prime minister, had said the women did "nothing good" but should not be judged too harshly. 
 
 The trio's defense lawyers said they would appeal. The Church issued a statement condemning the women's actions but urged the state to show mercy "within the framework of the law". 
 
 That appeared to signal that the Church would back a pardon or reduced sentence, although the women would be expected to admit guilt if they sought a pardon. 
 
 U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was concerned about the "disproportionate sentences ... and the negative impact on freedom of expression in Russia", and urged Russian authorities "to review this case". 
 
 EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the sentence called into question Russia's respect for the "obligations of fair, transparent, and independent legal process". 
 
 In protests outside Russia in support of Pussy Riot, a bare-chested feminist activist took a chainsaw to a wooden cross bearing a figure of Christ in Kiev. In Bulgaria, sympathizers put Pussy Riot-style masks on statues at a Soviet Army monument. 
 
 Opposition leaders say Putin will not ease up on opponents in his new term. Parliament has already rushed through laws increasing fines for protesters, tightening controls on the Internet, and imposing stricter rules on defamation. 
 
 Gay rights suffered a blow in Moscow when an appeals court upheld a ruling rejecting applications from activists to hold a gay rights march each year for the next 100 years. Anti-gay activists later sued Madonna for $10 million in St Petersburg, saying she insulted their feelings by speaking out for gay rights there last week. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Alissa de Carbonnel, Thomas Grove and Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Olzhas Auyezov in Kiev; Editing by Alastair Macdonald, Will Waterman and Giles Elgood)
– The 2-year prison sentence given to Russian punk band Pussy Riot yesterday has sparked angry commentary from Western observers. Among the reactions: Voices in the ruling United Russia party called for moderation in the sentencing, which means "Russia will not become a totalitarian regime again," notes Uwe Klussmen at Der Spiegel. But "by turning basically harmless artists into criminals, the regime has transformed the trial against Pussy Riot into a political time bomb." He quotes a Moscow journalist who predicts that "it will lead to revolution and to war and blood." At Daily Beast, Masha Gessen sees a resemblance to the Salem witch trials. The sentencing judge said a member of Pussy Riot has a "mixed personality disorder" that includes "stubbornness and a tendency to insist categorically on her own opinion as well as a tendency toward oppositional forms of behavior." Writes Gessen: "Sound awkward in English? That’s because it’s not just from a different world but from a different era." The "stark" human rights drama of Soviet times has morphed into a situation that's "harder to figure out, often making it easier for outsiders simply to give the government a pass," writes Rachel Denber at CNN. But under Vladimir Putin, critics have been silenced or murdered; now Pussy Riot has shown us how Russia works. "What we really should be wondering isn't why Pussy Riot is so distinctive, but whether it's just the tip of the iceberg."