Riot police conduct ‘preventative’ raid on LGBTQ+ club in Yekaterinburg, Russia

Local police, OMON riot police, and canine units raided an LGBTQ+ club in Yekaterinburg, Russia during an event Saturday night, according to Yekaterinburg-based news outlet Ura.ru.

The Yekaterinburg Interior Ministry’s press service reported that during the “preventative” raid, police checked “over 100 citizens” and confiscated “unlabeled bottles containing hard alcohol.” A Ura.ru correspondent who witnessed the incident said that police checked people’s documents and wrote down their information.

A member of the city civic council, Dmitry Chukreev, who took part in the raid said it was carried out because of “reports from concerned citizens” and was not in any way related to the recent Russian Supreme Court decision to ban the so-called “LGBT movement.”

On November 30, the Russian Supreme Court banned the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization.” The day after the court’s decision, which had yet to come into force, police conducted raids on clubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg that were holding events for LGBTQ+ people.