"This was a really big one for us," says Hutsol, who counts the ambush of Putin as one of the group's two most successful stunts - along with confronting the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, last year.
"Everyone knows that they are scumbags and idiots, and everyone wishes they could say it to their face, but it's difficult. They are two of the best guarded people in the world, I think Barack Obama has 100 times less security than Putin. And we, as women, were able to penetrate his security, approach him, and tell him to f*** off to his face."
Founded back in 2008, Femen first hit the headlines with a demonstration against prostitution and sex tourism in Ukraine. With the slogan "Ukraine is not a brothel", the women dressed as brides and ripped their clothes off, to protest against a New Zealand radio show, the Rock, that offered the winner the chance to come to Ukraine in 2011 and pick a wife. A movement was born.
Since then, they have protested against everything from corruption to discrimination and patriarchy in all its forms. The movement has spread, too, notably to France and Germany.
There have been criticisms along the way: for protesting on too all-embracing a range of issues (which sometimes seem to have more to do with a desire for column inches than with specific grievances); and for their trademark topless tactics, which opponents say buy into the degrading sexualised tropes they claim to be fighting against.
Hutsol rejects both accusations. "Topless protests are about demonstrating woman in the form of protest," she says. "It's about identifying yourself as a woman, about showing that women can change social opinion. We are reclaiming the idea of woman from a sexual object to a protest."
Shevchenko adds that the topless protests will not necessarily continue forever.
Shevchenko has been arrested more than 70 times, in various countries. She has a court case pending in Ukraine and is waiting to hear whether German prosecutors will press charges over her Putin stunt. During Euro 2012, in Ukraine, she was kidnapped for several hours by agents from the security services, to prevent a planned protest. Another group of Femen activists was kidnapped and disappeared for days in neighbouring Belarus.
The group has always had a core cell of a few dozen hardline activists in Ukraine. During the past year, however, Femen has started spreading across the world. In Germany and France, members of the original team have been dispatched for moral and physical training of the new recruits. ("You're no good as a sextremist if you can't vault a fence.")
Most controversially, the group has found an active recruit in Amina Tyler, a 19-year-old Tunisian woman who in March posted topless photos online with "my body is my own" scrawled on her breasts. Tyler immediately received death threats and was forced to go into hiding; a video surfaced of her apparently being drugged and given a virginity test by members of her own family.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Femen has taken an increasingly anti-religious turn. Last summer, activist Inna Shevchenko (no relation to Alexandra) destroyed a 4m wooden cross outside Kiev.
With the verdict against Russian punk feminists Pussy Riot due the next day, Shevchenko used a chainsaw to slice through the huge cross, prompting a wave of fury and even death threats.
The act lost Femen some supporters, but the women are unapologetic.
- Independent
