Karen Shainyan was fined 800 thousand for “propaganda”

The website of Moscow magistrates revealed the amount and reason for fines for journalist, psychoanalyst and openly gay Karen Shainyan. The judge valued five posts in the Just Got Lucky telegram channel, divided into four cases, at 800 thousand rubles.

As the Crime 6.21 channel noted , the texts of the July decisions appeared the day before on the court’s website. Roskomnadzor sent four protocols to the court at the end of the pride month. All four relate to “propaganda” among children - the court emphasizes that Karen could, but did not, make the “18+” sign.

The meeting, like many similar ones, was conducted by Justice of the Peace Alexandra Mikhaleva. She recently judged the editor-in-chief of “Guys+” Evgeniy Pisemsky.

In total, Roskomnadzor drew attention to five ordinary publications in the JGL telegram channel. Moreover, Karen Shainyan’s post about Sigmund Freud’s letter to the mother of a gay man ended up in two protocols at once. A column about this letter appeared in the project’s mailing list back in October 2025.

Officials were alarmed by a selection of photos from the engagement of Ukrainian musician Melovin to a Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier. Despite the official course of Russian propaganda that Ukraine is “all LGBT”, “foreign agents” cannot talk about this - the rights of LGBT Ukrainians are also recognized as a subject of “propaganda”:

“The purpose of these posts is to convince the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relationships and preferences, as well as to express their approval by highlighting the long-term and happy relationships of a gay couple, attracting the reader’s attention to a significant event in the life of a Ukrainian musician and his lover - a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, presenting this fact as a positive phenomenon, which is achieved through the use of romanticization techniques. The publication also focuses the recipient’s attention on the problem of legalizing the rights of Ukrainians, representatives of the LGBT community, including the military,” the judge wrote.

The banned list included congratulations to lesbians on their International Day and a publication about a gay couple who have been together for 44 years.

The judge was not embarrassed to fine Shainyan for publications that were clearly not made by him. For example, Yaroslav Rasputin wrote a humorous post about the popularity of trans porn in Russia on his own behalf.

“The author voices his own preferences in porn (“In 2025, I still watch gay porn on VKontakte and I don’t know any troubles”), as well as his attitude towards the leadership of the query “transgender” among the Russian Pornhub audience: “Nice boots, you have to take it” - this is approximately how I perceive the fact that the most popular search on the orange site in Russia has become “transgender.” This is what prohibitions lead to!”

In addition, the author of the publication discusses the increased interest of users in non-traditional porn, pointing out the uselessness of legislative regulation of sexual preferences: “Interest in “forbidden” porn is generally common.”

The purpose of this post is to create a socio-psychological attitude about the normality of non-traditional sexual relationships, by publishing data on the increased interest of the audience in LGBT pornography. In addition, the author of the publication expresses a positive attitude towards non-traditional sexual preferences.”