The website "Guys Plus", dedicated to LGBT issues, was recognized as an "extremist organization"

A court in Orel recognized the website “Guys Plus,” which writes about the problems of the LGBT community, as an “extremist organization.” According to the website’s editors, the court decision states that the project has already been “liquidated by the court in connection with the implementation of extremist activities.” “Of course, we will not be ‘liquidated’ anywhere, no matter how much the Russian authorities would like it,” the Guys Plus statement says.

The case includes an expert’s opinion, which cites materials published there as evidence of the “extremist” activities of the site: publications about queer people from Russian regions and LGBT families, discrimination monitoring data, a webinar with the participation of a psychologist and a lawyer on the law banning “LGBT propaganda.”

As Guys Plus journalist Vadim Vaganov said in an interview with The Insider, the editors are not going to stop their work, but will begin to take security issues even more seriously for both authors living in Russia and the audience.

“We were not surprised by this news. Our media has long irritated the current government. We haven’t gone into the shadows, we haven’t stopped releasing materials, we haven’t stopped talking to our audience and we haven’t stopped helping people - although the pressure has been on us for a long time. Both the media itself and members of our team individually have already been recognized as “foreign agents.” In the last year alone, our team was fined more than two million rubles. Personally, I already have six fines under the article on so-called propaganda.

As you can see, the pressure did not stop us, and this, it seems to me, causes particular irritation for the state. So they decided to move on to the next step: to specifically designate us as “extremists.” The risks are, of course, growing. But LGBTQ people's need for information and support is not going away. On the contrary, in such a situation it only becomes more acute. Therefore, we will certainly continue to work. But the main question for us now is how to continue our activities as safely as possible for our audience.

We have authors in Russia, and this cooperation is very important for us. We understand the risks involved and have a long history of working under different pressure scenarios. We have safety protocols, we try to take into account all possible statuses and consequences, and now, of course, we will look even more carefully at how to build this work further.”

Guys+ editor-in-chief Evgeniy Pisemsky added that repression in Russia is structured “like an endless meat grinder”:

“Their goal is not just to punish, but to exhaust you to the point where you don’t even have the strength to breathe. Since 2020, our LGBT media has been living in a series of endless courts, protocols and appeals. In the last year alone, our team members were fined more than 15 times in the amount of over 2 million rubles. It is a methodical attempt to silence us, to become faceless shadows, to erase the very possibility of being open. But we won’t close now. Even under the weight of fines and in conditions of a severe funding crisis, we remain one of the few media that continues to work for LGBT people in Russia, refusing to pretend that we do not exist. Recognizing us as extremists was not news to us, we were well prepared, and those for whom it was dangerous in Russia left it.”

In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court declared the non-existent “International LGBT Movement” extremist. In April 2025, the Ministry of Justice for the first time named a specific person whom the Russian authorities consider to be a participant in this movement - he became the “Guys Plus” journalist and former member of the “Youth Yabloko” Vadim Vaganov.