Video shows Russian police raiding gay bar amid national anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown

Less than two weeks after Russia’s Supreme Court declared the international gay rights movement an “extremist organization,” Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ people continues unabated.

In Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, a video distributed by local news outlet Ura.ru on Saturday revealed riot police storming a dance club and ordering patrons out. About two dozen people can be seen looking about in surprise as heavily armed officers swarm the Fame Club and Karaoke Bar. Officers order the music turned off and, as the disco’s light flash around them, bark orders to the exiting patrons.

Related:

Russian police raid gay venues hours after Supreme Court’s “extremist” ruling

It’s officially open season on any LGBTQ+ supporters in the former Soviet country.

It was unclear what role the media organization sharing video of the raid played in the incident. In the past, Yekaterinburg-based Ura.ru has been critical of the Russian government, but the media outlet was recently described as “Kremlin-friendly” by Radio Free Europe.

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A crackdown in Moscow last week saw police raid a nightclub, a male sauna, and an LGBTQ+-inclusive bar in the Russian capital, with officers checking and photographing patrons’ IDs. 

Under the new “extremist” designation approved by Russia’s top court following a request by Putin’s Justice Ministry, individuals found guilty of “extremist” activities can be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Taken together with the government’s recent expansion of Russia’s “gay propaganda” laws, LGBTQ+ people in the country are now subject to criminal prosecution for any organized activity associated with LGBTQ+ identity, from displaying a Pride flag to patronizing an LGBTQ+ establishment.

“It’s a bleak, bleak part of history for Russian LGBTQ society, unfortunately,” Renat Davletgildeev, an LGBTQ+ activist and journalist who fled Russia last year told NBC News. “And we are only on the first step on the way to hell.”

HRC’s Tanya Lokshina described the police raids as “particularly extreme.”

“They’re not going to go after each and every LGBT person who exhibits their sexual orientation,” she said. “But they’re going to go after some people — which will make it clear to everyone else — that you have to shut up or else, because that’s the way the Russian government operates.”

Part of the crackdown includes identifying LGBTQ+ businesses and venues across the country for possible persecution. An anonymous employee of 2GIS, a company that develops digital maps, provided independent investigative outlet iStories with a screenshot of a message from management instructing staff to begin reviewing businesses included on the company’s maps and adding LGBTQ+ establishments to a special registry.

President Putin has long maintained that the international gay rights movement is a Trojan horse for the West’s cultural decadence and a threat to Russian traditional values. Since invading Ukraine in February 2022, he has increasingly attacked “extremists” from within as undermining the country’s sovereignty.

That defense of Russian values will likely be a key campaign pledge as Putin seeks another six-year term as president in March. He announced his bid on Friday.

“There will be a complete distraction from real problems, the creation of mythical enemies, discrimination of the population on various grounds, this is just the beginning,” Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation in Russia, posted to X.

Maria Alyokhina, queer leader of Russia’s activist punk rock group Pussy Riot, who escaped detention in Russia last year, agreed, telling NBC News, “They need to feed this idea of the country surrounded by enemies who want to destroy us.”

“In Russia, there is a dark joke that there is no level of bottom,” she added. “So it definitely can be worse, and with this terrible law it would be worse.”