Pussy Riot punk group supporters place masks on a monument to WWII heroes to resemble Pussy Riot members, at an underground station in Moscow on Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. Three group members who were jailed in March following a guerrilla performance denouncing President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral have unwillingly emerged as vivid ? and very different ? characters. They await a verdict Friday on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. (AP Photo/Yevgeny Feldman, Novaya Gazeta)
Pussy Riot punk group supporters place masks on a monument to WWII heroes to resemble Pussy Riot members, at an underground station in Moscow on Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. Three group members who were jailed in March following a guerrilla performance denouncing President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral have unwillingly emerged as vivid ? and very different ? characters. They await a verdict Friday on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. (AP Photo/Yevgeny Feldman, Novaya Gazeta)
EDS NOTE: NUDITY Two women react near a member of the Ukrainian feminist group 'FEMEN', left, as a sawed down cross, erected in honor of victims of political repressions, is pulled to the ground, in protest against the Moscow trial of Russian punk group Pussy Riot, in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, Aug. 17, 2012.(AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
A man plays a guitar while resting on the base of a monument to Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbaev in Moscow on Friday, Aug. 17, 2012, with the face covered with a mask to resemble feminist punk group Pussy Riot members. The three women in the band Pussy Riot have been in jail for more than five months because of a prank in Moscow's main cathedral against Russia's Vladimir Putin, and they face a maximum seven years in jail, as they await a verdict Friday on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. (AP Photo/Yevgeny Feldman, Novaya Gazeta)
A man passes a slogan on a wall reading: 'Free Pussy Riot' in the district Kreuzberg in Berlin, Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. Three members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot were jailed in March and charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after their punk performance against President Putin in Moscow?s main cathedral. They are awaiting the verdict on Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Feminist Russian punk group Pussy Riot members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, center, Maria Alekhina, right, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, are escorted to a glass cage at a court room in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. The three women in the band have been in jail for more than five months because of a prank they carried out in Moscow's main cathedral in a demonstration against Russia's Vladimir Putin, and they now face a maximum seven years in jail. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)
PARIS (AP) ? They asked for undies on heads, masks, and as much color as possible on Friday. They got a topless activist hacking down a cross in Ukraine, balaclavas on Soviet-era statues of soldiers in Bulgaria, and signs for "Justice" in Spain.
Organizers of protests in more than three dozen cities around the world are hoping thousands of others will turn out in raucous support of Pussy Riot, the Russian provocateurs facing a verdict in Moscow.
The three women in the band, who have been in jail for more than five months because of a guerrilla performance denouncing President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral, face a maximum seven years in prison.
In Ukraine, four feminist activists, one of them topless, used a chainsaw to hack down a wooden cross in Kiev's central square in a show of support.
"A cross is a symbol of the repressive religious prejudice that supports dictatorship. Now people who worship the cross want to jail the innocent," said Anna Gutsol, leader of the group that chopped down the nearly 6-meter (18-foot) tall cross put into place during Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
In Sofia, Bulgaria, supporters of Pussy Riot dressed statues on a Soviet-era monument in colorful balaclavas similar to those worn by demonstrators in Moscow.
Celebrities including Paul McCartney, Madonna and Bjork have called for the band to be freed. Germany's top human rights official, Markus Loening, joined them Friday, saying their detention had already been "fully disproportionate."
The trial on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred has attracted worldwide attention as an emblem of Russia's intolerance of dissent.
In Paris, a protest is planned to coincide with the verdict on Igor Stravinsky Square, near the Centre Pompidou modern art museum. In Washington and capitals around Europe, protests are planned outside Russian embassies.
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Associated Press reporters Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Anna Melnichuk in Kiev, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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