The band members were ordered to appear at the headquarters of the Moscow City Police on Monday for an “interrogation,” said group soloist Maria Lyubicheva.

The phone call from the police headquarters informed the band that the electro-punk song “Gotov” (“Ready”), which was performed at the rally on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, can be interpreted as extremist.

Lyubicheva told the BBC that the offending lyrics – “to set fire to cop cars at night” and “the law is garbage” – have been taken out of context.

The chorus of the song, which was read without instrumental accompaniment at the rally, reads: I’m ready!/ And are you ready?/ To set fire to cop cars at night?/ It’s like a principle of life, a sign of good taste/ For those to whom the law is garbage.

“The song needs to be listened to in its entirety, because if you take lines out of context, then you can intentionally misconstrue any piece of work and call it extremist,” said Lyubicheva, who wrote the song’s lyrics.

According to the artist, the chorus speaks about the sacrifices that two people are prepared to make for the sake of their love.

Songs containing derogatory remarks about the Russian police cost popular rapper Noize MC a ten-day jail sentence in August.

The rapper, famous for his indictment of the Moscow police in his song “Mercedes S-666,” labeled some law enforcement officers “animals with red insignia” after they tried to stop him from handing a hat to attendees of one of his concerts in Volgograd in order to collect donations – a routine part of the artist’s program.

After the concert, Noize MC was detained for 48 hours and convicted the next day of minor hooliganism.

The rally in defense of the Khimki Forest on August 22 was sanctioned by the Moscow city authorities, a move that surprised organizers used to being denied permission to hold opposition events. At the same time, police refused to allow sound equipment to be set up on the stage.

The authorities argued that the use of sound equipment would turn the rally into a concert, which they did not grant permission to hold. However, as oppositionists noted, sound equipment is always used at their various other rallies.

In the end, a variety of musical groups, including Barto and headlined by rock singer Yury Shevchuk, performed acoustically with only the aid of megaphones.

The event is planned to be held on August 22 on Pushkin Square, and the mayor’s office had initially agreed to the event. However, a press release from the mayor’s office on Thursday stated that the organizers had only submitted the paperwork to hold a rally, not a concert.

Organizer Mikhail Shneyder was told by the city’s bureau for event management and safety that there’s no way to hold a rally and a concert at the same time. “You’re announcing all over the place that you’re holding a rally-concert, but that kind of format for an event does not exist. You will not be allowed to hold a concert and set up a covered stage,” Shneyder quoted the bureau as saying.

“I know that that kind of format doesn’t exist,” the organizer explained in response. “The law stipulates just a rally, but it’s for us to decide who is going to appear at our rally and how; if we want, we’ll call on a Buddhist and he’ll arrange 20 simultaneous chess matches.”

Regardless of any legal ambiguities, the organizers plan to go on with the show. Scheduled to be present are the groups DDT, OtZvuki My, Televizor, Padla Bear Outfit, and Barto. Journalist Artemy Troitsky agreed to host the event.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of DDT and an outspoken Kremlin critic, said the band had already purchased tickets to Moscow and was coming to the event for certain.

“Leap frog between the Moscow authorities – that’s a normal affair,” Shevchuk told Kasparov.ru. “We’re going to Moscow with an acoustic lineup and we’ll see there whether or not they’re going to let us play. That’s the kind of weather we have nowadays – either hot or cold.”

Yevgenia Chirikova, leader of the movement to defend the Khimki Forest, insisted that the Moscow authorities had no legal right to ban their event. “I don’t know a single law that would ban setting up a stage for a rally. The authorities’ quibbles are entirely baseless,” she said.

“Let them not allow the people to hear Shevchuk and demonstrate to everyone that they are inflexible and unpopular politicians,” the activist went on. “We have been supported by musicians of the very highest caliber, and a smart civil servant wouldn’t think to bother us.”

The felling of the Khimki Forest began this past July. An expressway from Moscow to St. Petersburg is planned to take its place. Ecologists and activists have spoken out strongly against the project, insisting that it violates the law.