There's no need to assign blame. Everyone wins. The girls will serve 2 years in a penal colony and then go on world tours with Madonna and Paul McCartney and become millionaires. Plus it will be a triumph for freedom in a country where not long ago they wouldn't have gotten away with that, in a world where some countries would still kill them for it. At the same time, Russian society is protected against a flood of similar exhibitions, because if someone else tries the same thing they'll only get the two years and not the fame. The fame only goes to the creative artist, the person who first thought of something so outrageous that no one had ever done it before. The next person will have to think of something new, perhaps spitting in the faces of people wearing fur or leather shoes or coming out of restaurants where meat is served, as a protest against mistreatment of animals.

You might as well ask who bears the responsibility for the looting of our economy. Ronald Reagan, for starting the trend of deregulation? All the presidents since then, who continued it? Mitt Romney and his ilk, who took advantage of that freedom to make billions destroying what others had built? But they're all winners. As in the Russian case, the only loser is the common man or woman who's bewildered by it all and has to earn a living one dollar at a time in a world where honest work is regarded with contempt. They lose no matter what happens, so you certainly can't blame anyone for that.