Pussy Riot member arrested at Moscow demo

Local media said Tolokonnikova was arrested on Friday as she and a fellow protester made a statement in central Moscow about the conditions women face in Russian prisons.

Tolokonnikova tweeted a picture before she and Katrin Nenasheva appeared in Bolotnaya Square wearing prison uniforms.

The pair sat down to sew a Russian flag, before being approached by police. The group tweeted a picture of her subsequent arrest on its English-language Twitter account.

"I'm in the police van," Tolokonnikova told opposition radio station Echo of Moscow afterwards. "I haven't been told which police station we're headed to. There's another person with me."

Sewing in 'slave-like conditions'

The two activists were arrested for holding a "non-authorized protest" in which they planned to sew a Russian flag while wearing prison uniforms.

The protest was held at central Moscow's Bolotnaya Square, the scene of clashes between police and protesters in 2012.

Tolokonnikova and fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina were jailed for two years after they held an anti-Putin punk protest at a Moscow church in 2012. The pair had been found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. They were released in late 2013.

Tolokonnikova, who spent most of her jail time in a women's penal colony in central Russia has described the conditions she experienced as close to "slavery." She served time in a prison sewing shop and even went on hunger strike to protest the situation in Russia's jails.

'A modern, open and independent country'

The protest took place on Russia day, which commemorates the 1990 declaration of state sovereignty by Russia, which had been one of 15 republics within the Soviet Union.

To mark the occasion, President Vladimir Putin praised the country, saying it had made "a successful breakthrough to democracy and a market economy, but also able to establish itself as a modern, open and independent country."