Russian bar employees sentenced to up to seven years in country's first ‘LGBT extremism’ case

The owner and two employees of a gay bar in Russia's Orenburg region have been sentenced to prison terms in the country's first known criminal case targeting the so-called “international LGBT movement”, which Russia's Supreme Court outlawed as an “extremist organisation” in 2023.

According to the court’s press service, Vyacheslav Khasanov, the owner of the Pose bar, received the harshest sentence and was also ordered to forfeit more than a million rubles deemed “proceeds of criminal activity”. The bar's manager, Diana Kamilyanova, was sentenced to six years and three months, while its art director, Alexander Klimov, was given two years and three months.

All three defendants were charged with participating in the activities of an “extremist organisation”. All of them pleaded not guilty.

The case was opened in March 2024, the first prosecution of its kind following the Supreme Court's November 2023 ruling branding the “international LGBT movement” as “extremist”. After their arrests, all three defendants were placed on Russia's registry of “extremists and terrorists”. The complaints that triggered the investigation were filed by activists from the Orenburg branch of the far-right nationalist group Russian Community.

The Supreme Court decision marked a major escalation in the Russian state's repression of LGBTQ people, paving the way for new raids on gay clubs, the closure of rights organisations, and prosecutions over symbols as simple as a rainbow.