Gay until proven otherwise The strange targets of Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown include a manga snake romance, a sibling blog, and an eco activist
As Russia’s sweeping ban on anything connected to LGBTQ+ life drags on, officials and law enforcement have grown adept at finding the supposed promotion of “non-traditional relations” wherever it suits them. In their hunt for new reasons to levy fines and penalties, they scour the Internet and rely on informants. The independent outlet 7×7 reviewed some of the more unusual cases brought under the repressive laws. Meduza shares a few, translated into English.
A photo booth at a Viking village
On September 22, 2025, a historical reenactment center in Kaliningrad known as Kaup — which bills itself as a “Viking village” — was fined 800,000 rubles ($9,700) under Russia’s law against so-called “LGBT propaganda.”
The center’s director, Anastasia Tarasova, told Mediazona that the charges stemmed from a June event called “From Dusk Till Dawn.” The gathering was organized not by Kaup itself, but by a local businessman who had rented the grounds. He also installed a joke photo booth with “BDSM” written on it, which became the basis for the fine. In addition, police filed a case against Kaup for a photo that allegedly showed two women kissing there.
This wasn’t the first “From Dusk Till Dawn” party held at Kaup. Journalists from the outlet 7×7 found five separate photo albums from the events posted to the center’s VKontakte page. One 2024 album included an image of a woman holding a dildo. More recent photos, however, showed no evidence of women kissing — only two women pressing their cheeks together as if blowing a kiss toward the camera.
“Our arguments that there was no propaganda, let alone of non-traditional values, were ignored by both the court and the prosecutor’s office,” the Kaup administrators later wrote on VK. “We’re not asking to cancel oversight — only for fairness and legality.”
A ‘non-traditional’ love story between a girl and a snake
Ivan Kvast, the manager of MangaLIB — the largest Russian-language online platform for publishing comics, manga, and anime — was fined 200,000 rubles ($2,400) for hosting a Japanese manga series titled The Great Snake’s Bride. The court agreed with prosecutors that a romance between a human and a mythological creature qualified as “non-traditional.” Under the logic of Russian lawmakers, sexual relationships are permissible only between a man and a woman.
The penalties against Kvast personally have now topped one million rubles ($12,100). MangaLIB itself has faced even steeper fines: more than 14 million rubles ($169,600) across seven cases. Regulators flagged manga that included depictions of same-sex relationships and sexual content. In response, the site’s administrators introduced pre-moderation of all new material.
‘Suspiciously close’ twin brothers
Twin brothers from Tatarstan were each fined 100,000 rubles ($1,200) for allegedly promoting “non-traditional sexual relations” online, Verstka reported on September 23, 2025. The case centered on their blog, which has fewer than 2,000 subscribers and mostly features humorous videos alongside posts about travel, workouts, and daily life.
It’s not clear what specific content caught the attention of Russia’s Center for Combating Extremism. The court ruling cited by Verstka stated simply: “It has been established that the publications were made with the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations with a twin brother.”
The brothers partially admitted guilt but insisted they “had no intent.” The judge rejected that defense, saying they were only trying to avoid punishment. The conviction rested solely on materials submitted by law enforcement officers — the ruling contained no evidence of expert analysis.
An eco activist’s ‘saved posts’
On July 15, 2025, Pavel Osipov, an activist with the Sterlitamak, Breathe! movement, was fined 100,000 rubles ($1,200) for “promoting non-traditional sexual relations online, including among children.” Osipov believes the case stemmed from a denunciation by a local woman with ties to the city administration.
According to his account, this same woman had filed a lawsuit in 2023 against another activist, Grigory Gorovoy, who at the time was fighting in the war in Ukraine. The court ruled against him in absentia, ordering him to pay her 40,000 rubles ($500) in moral damages. Osipov later helped Gorovoy successfully appeal that ruling in 2024. That same year, the woman lodged a complaint against Osipov himself, pointing to images in his VKontakte “saved posts” folder that showed young women hugging and “kissing.”
Osipov claimed that he had saved the photos as part of a collection of evidence for a separate criminal case involving a woman from the Chelyabinsk region. “I saw three pictures on her Telegram channel — she’s there with a friend, hugging, kissing. I saved them for the purpose of identifying her,” he said. He added that he has three children and has been married for 18 years. In a video statement about the case, he even included a statement condemning what he called the “LGBT phenomenon.”
A post on Sterlitamak, Breathe!’s VK page noted that the prosecution’s witness was the daughter of a local politician, and that the woman who filed the complaint had repeatedly reported the city’s environmental activists to the authorities.
“This whole situation is an attempt to discredit an honest, principled person who isn’t afraid to speak the truth and fight for a safe environment in Sterlitamak,” Osipov’s supporters wrote.
Our only hope is you. Support Meduza before it’s too late.
The numbers behind Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ crackdowns
Russia’s campaign against what it calls “LGBT propaganda” has unfolded in stages. Between 2005 and 2013, lawmakers in a dozen regions experimented with bans on LGBTQ+ content accessible to minors. In June 2013, the Kremlin expanded the restrictions nationwide. The law forced many queer rights organizations to close, especially those working with teenagers.
The crackdown has only escalated during the war against Ukraine. On December 5, 2022, Russia banned all so-called “LGBT propaganda,” opening the door to widespread prosecutions that targeted not only activists. Less than a year later, in November 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court went further, designating the non-existent “LGBT movement” as an extremist organization.
Journalists at 7×7 analyzed court records to track how the Russian government has enforced these measures since the full ban came into effect. They looked at cases under three specific provisions of Russia’s Administrative Code: Article 6.21 (the general ban on “LGBT propaganda”), Article 6.21.2 (propaganda “targeting minors”), and Article 20.3 (the “promotion or public display of prohibited symbols”). The dataset isn’t complete: some courts publish records late or not at all, and the search program used in the project doesn’t capture every court, such as magistrates’ courts.
From 405 cases that reached the courts, judges heard 385 and issued rulings in 372. Of those, 162 resulted in fines. In 16 cases, judges handed down jail time of up to 15 days. Under the “total propaganda ban” statute, courts also ordered five foreigners deported following arrest.
Cases under Article 6.21.2, which applies to “propaganda of LGBT among minors,” have primarily targeted legal entities — streaming services, television channels, and similar outlets. One organization received a formal warning, while the rest were fined up to one million rubles ($12,100), although fine amounts are not publicly available for all cases.
The broader Article 6.21 ban, by contrast, has been used against both organizations — including the streaming service Kinopoisk, the publisher Eksmo, and local bars — and ordinary citizens. People have been prosecuted for memes saved on VKontakte or for conversations on dating websites.