Russia’s Anti–Gay Witch Hunt Just Got Even Weirder
In Russia, it seems almost anything can be labelled gay propaganda. As the government’s sweeping ban on LGBTQIA+ everything continues, officials are finding the supposed promotion of “non-traditional relations” in the most unlikely places.
Their search for new reasons to issue penalties relies on internet scouring and public informants. The independent outlet 7×7 reviewed some of the more unusual cases, and with a translation from Meduza, we can see just how far the crackdown has gone and how weird it is.
You can even get fined at a Viking village.
On September 22, 2025, a historical reenactment centre in Kaliningrad known as Kaup was fined an enormous 800,000 rubles ($9,700). The director told reporters the charges came from a party held on their grounds in June. The event organiser, who had rented the space, installed a photo booth with “BDSM” written on it, which became the core of the case. Police also claimed a photo showed two women kissing at the event.
However, a review of recent event photos showed no such image, only one of two women pressing their cheeks together for the camera. The centre’s administrators later wrote on the social media site VKontakte, “Our arguments that there was no propaganda, let alone of non-traditional values, were ignored by both the court and the prosecutor’s office.”
A love story between a girl and a snake is now illegal.
The manager of MangaLIB, a major online platform for comics and manga, was fined 200,000 rubles ($2,400). The reason was for hosting the Japanese manga series The Great Snake’s Bride. According to the court, a romance between a human girl and a mythological snake creature counts as “non-traditional”. Let’s just say that again: the snake is not real!
Russian lawmakers maintain that sexual relationships are only permissible between a man and a woman. The platform itself has faced over 14 million rubles ($169,600) in fines across seven different cases, forcing its administrators to pre-moderate all new material uploaded to the site.
Twin brothers are now ‘suspiciously close’.
Twin brothers from Tatarstan were each fined 100,000 rubles ($1,200) for promoting “non-traditional sexual relations” online. Their blog, which features humorous videos about travel and daily life, has fewer than 2,000 subscribers. The court ruling offered no specific evidence, stating only that their posts promoted “non-traditional sexual relations with a twin brother”.
The brothers insisted they had no such intent, but the judge dismissed their defence. The conviction was based solely on materials provided by law enforcement, with no expert analysis included in the ruling.
So, what are the numbers behind the crackdown?
Russia’s campaign against what it calls “LGBT propaganda” has been escalating for years. After a 2013 nationwide law restricted content for minors, the government imposed a total ban on all so-called “LGBT propaganda” on December 5, 2022.
By November 2023, the country’s Supreme Court designated the non-existent “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organisation. An analysis of court records by 7×7 found that of 405 cases brought under these laws, 372 received rulings.
These resulted in 162 fines, 16 jail sentences of up to 15 days, and the deportation of five foreigners. The laws have been used against large streaming services and publishers, as well as ordinary people prosecuted for saved memes or conversations on dating websites.
