Two freed members of the Russian group Pussy Riot were honored Wednesday night at a concert organized by Amnesty International. Nadia Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are in the U.S. following their release from prison in December. They had spent nearly two years behind bars for protesting Russian President Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox cathedral. In front of a crowd of thousands at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the pop star Madonna introduced the Pussy Riot members.

Madonna: “I do not take this freedom for granted, and neither should you, OK? So, the two members of Pussy Riot that I’m about to introduce do not have this right in the country they come from. They do not share this freedom with me, so they must be commended for their courage and for their fearlessness. Yay! That would be a yay! You can do better than that. They must be commended!”

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: “We will not forgive and we will not forget what the regime is doing to our fellow citizens, so we demand a Russia that is free, a Russia without Putin!”

Earlier in the day, the two women from Pussy Riot met with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, prompting a rebuke from Power’s Russian counterpart. Meanwhile, at a news conference before the event, the women responded to reports of a rift within Pussy Riot.

Maria Alyokhina: “When we were jailed, Pussy Riot immediately became very popular and widely known. And it has turned from just a group into essentially an international movement. Anybody can be Pussy Riot. You just need to put on a mask and stage an act of protest against something in your particular country, wherever that may be, that you consider unjust.”

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: “And we’re not here as leaders of Pussy Riot or determining what Pussy Riot is and what it does and what it says. We are just two individuals that spent two years in jail for taking part in a Pussy Riot protest action.”

Six anonymous members of Pussy Riot have released a letter saying Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are no longer members and calling the sale of concert tickets and the use of an Amnesty International event logo displaying a man in a Pussy Riot mask an “extreme contradiction” of the group’s principles. Other performers at Wednesday’s event included The Flaming Lips, Blondie and Lauryn Hill.