Russia Sentences Queer Nightclub Owner and Staff to Prison in First ‘LGBT Extremism’ Case

A Russian bar owner and two employees of an LGBTQ+ nightclub have each been sentenced to several years in prison in what is the country’s first prosecution related to a law that essentially banned any organizing in favor of LGBTQ+ people.

In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court classified the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the country as extremist, which means those found supporting it or organizing for it can be labeled as terrorists, according to Human Rights Watch.

The three were charged with organizing activities as part of an “extremist organization,” which Russia now designates the country’s LGBTQ+ rights movement as, independent Russian news outlet Meduza reports.

The club had been raided two years ago. Pose first opened in 2021 and hosted drag performances. To avoid the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it advertised as a “parody bar theatre,” Reuters reports, citing local reporting from Mediazona.

On Monday, a court in Orenburg, a city in southwestern Russia, handed down a seven-year sentence to 37-year-old Pose owner Vyacheslav Khasanov, along with a fine of 1 million Russian rubles (about $13,000); over six years to 30-year-old Diana Kamilyanova; and more than two years to 23-year-old Alexander Klimov.

Prosecutors said that Kamilyanova had filmed drag performances at Pose, while Klimov met with the drag artists on social media, according to Meduza. They argued that the Pose employees were guilty because they were people with “non-traditional sexual orientation” who worked with those supportive of LGBTQ+ people to keep the club running.

The three had pleaded not guilty.

“Russian authorities are intensifying their criminalization of those who provide critical support to the very LGBT people they have systematically persecuted,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW in a May report. “Authorities should vacate all court decisions and criminal convictions based on these spurious ‘extremism’ charges.”

The group points out that in the last several months, nine LGBTQ+ rights organizations have been designated as “extremist” by local courts.

“The Russian government’s banning of LGBT rights organizations is absurd, harmful, and discriminatory,” Williamson said. “Rights-respecting governments should support Russian LGBT groups and activists, including by enabling them to continue their work from abroad.”

LGBTQ+ rights activists in the country warn that Monday’s verdicts will now serve as a precedent for further persecution of LGBTQ+ people and the erasure of queer safe spaces in the country.