Russian authorities have launched the country’s first-ever criminal case into “LGBT extremism,” the head of the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League Yekaterina Mizulina said Monday, just months after a top court banned the so-called “international LGBT movement.”
Pro-war activists said earlier this month that they helped law enforcement agencies target a gay club in the city of Orenburg on suspicion of spreading “LGBT propaganda,” adding that 20 patrons had allegedly sued the venue.
“The issue of opening a criminal case is currently under consideration,” a group of pro-war activists, known as the Russian Community of Orenburg, wrote on the messaging app Telegram at the time.
On Monday, Mizulina claimed that criminal charges were pressed “in connection with the activities of the LGBT club Pose.”
“This is the first such criminal case in Russia after the Supreme Court’s decision to recognize LGBT as an extremist movement,” she wrote on Telegram.
There was no comment from law enforcement officials as of Monday afternoon.
Several Russians have faced misdemeanor charges of “extremism” in the months since Russia’s Supreme Court ruled on the LGBTQ+ ban in November.
