Russia Fined A News Site $6,600 Just For Reviewing “Heated Rivalry”
A Russian court has fined regional news site Saratov Business Consulting (SarBC) 500,000 rubles, around USD6,600, for publishing a review of the gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry. The ruling is one of the first enforcement actions tying Russia’s expanded “gay propaganda” law to coverage of the Crave and HBO Max series, which has become a cult hit inside Russia despite being effectively banned there.
A review, a fine, and a link swap gone wrong
The offending article, headlined Why Did ‘Heated Rivalry’ Become Popular?, appeared briefly on the SarBC site before staff pulled it. An employee told reporters the piece arrived through a content-sharing deal with another outlet. “The article just came from a link exchange. It was published for a short time, but we quickly took it down. It’s a harmless review,” the employee said.
The Oktyabrsky District Court in Saratov disagreed. It imposed the maximum administrative penalty available under the statute, a signal that regional judges are applying it aggressively.
Why Heated Rivalry is such a flashpoint
For anyone who missed it, Heated Rivalry is Jacob Tierney’s adaptation of Rachel Reid’s bestselling novel. It follows the long-running secret romance between closeted Russian NHL star Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Canadian rival Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams). The series premiered on Crave in November 2025, dropped the same day on HBO Max in the United States and Australia, and currently holds a 96 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The show has quietly blown up in Russia, too. On local review platform Kinopoisk, Heated Rivalry sits at 8.3 out of 10 from more than 60,000 viewers, almost all of whom found it through pirate streams and VPNs. A drama about a closeted Russian hockey player falling for a Canadian one was always going to be politically loaded. A Russian audience rallying behind it anyway is the part the Kremlin clearly cannot stomach.
The law behind the fine
Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” legislation was originally limited to minors. In December 2022, Vladimir Putin signed an amendment extending the ban to adults and outlawing any positive depiction of LGBTQIA+ relationships in media, advertising, or online content. A year later, the Supreme Court labelled the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organisation, opening the door to broader prosecutions.
The effect has been chilling. Human Rights Watch recorded 257 propaganda-related penalties across Russia in 2023 and 2024, up from just 22 in the two years before the law was expanded. Small regional outlets are now routinely fined for cultural coverage that would not raise an eyebrow anywhere else.
Resistance is louder than the fines
Despite the crackdown, Russians are not going quiet. VPN downloads tripled from 12.6 million in 2021 to 33.5 million in 2022, and by 2025, around 41 per cent of Russian internet users were routing around state blocks (CEPA). That is how Heated Rivalry earned its 8.3 Kinopoisk rating from 60,000-plus viewers, and how Yuri Dud’s documentary on HIV in Russia has pulled more than 24 million YouTube views.
Publishing has held on, too. Days after Popcorn Books, the house behind the bestselling gay novel Pioneer Summer was forced to close, and part of the team launched a new imprint called Soda Press (Novaya Gazeta). Rights group Coming Out, labelled “extremist” by a St Petersburg court in early 2026, now runs its support work from exile and refuses to dissolve (Washington Times). The audience for queer Russian culture has not disappeared, only gone underground.
