The employees and owner of the Orenburg bar Pose were sentenced to up to 7 years in prison in Russia’s first case of “LGBT extremism”

The Central District Court of Orenburg sentenced three employees of the Pose bar, accused of organizing activities and participating in an “extremist” organization, to terms ranging from two years and three months to seven years in a general regime colony. The press service of the court reported this.

The correspondent of "Caution, News" reports that the longest sentence - seven years in prison - was assigned to the owner of the bar, Vyacheslav Khasanov. The establishment's administrator, Diana Kamilyanova, was sentenced to six years and three months in prison, and art director Alexander Klimov was sentenced to two years and three months in prison.

According to investigators, the accused, knowing about the ban on the “international LGBT movement” in Russia, held “events in the bar that were united by the common theme of demonstrating belonging to persons of non-traditional sexual orientation for an indefinite number of people from among the visitors.” We're talking about drag parties.

All Pose employees have pleaded not guilty.

The court also recovered 1 million rubles from Khasanov for “criminal proceeds from the activities of an extremist organization.” In addition, the convicts were banned from engaging in activities in the field of entertainment and public catering for up to three years.

Khasanov, Kamilyanov and Klimov were detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center in March 2024. A few weeks earlier, security forces conducted a raid in Pose , which was attended by representatives of the Orenburg “Russian community”. Later it became known that Klimov and Kamilyanova were released from the pre-trial detention center under house arrest.

Pose opened in 2021 and hosted themed parties. The club itself called itself “the first thematic establishment” in Orenburg, and after the adoption of the law on “LGBT propaganda”, it began to present itself as a “bar-theater of parodies” and “a night bar with a show program.” As a precaution, employees did not indicate the club's address on social networks.