In his early twenties, Michael (not his real name), a gay man from the UFA city of Russia, did what I love: made offers.

“I was going on a tour, to the competitions; I met new artists and planned because the clouds will be my grandfather.”

At this stage, Michael said, he lived his life publicly and did not suffer from public hostility from the daily audience. But in the past few years, things have begun to change.

“Fears arose in the club’s manufacturing,” he said. “The restrictions were placed on the numbers of Ukrainian artists, a ban on the topics related to gay. In daily life, there was simply eternal anxiety.”

The last straw came when the police targeted the place where Michael worked in a raid.

“I fell in raids more than once, but my last raid was the most terrifying and most terrifying,” he recalls.

After that, this was followed by an eight or nine -hour interrogation, as they apply psychological pressure to me without stopping. After that, I had to leave the country in order to maintain my freedom. “

Russia is not only waging the war on Ukraine, but also what enemies see inside. The persecution of individuals, organizations and societies has intensified in the past few years, as the Kremlin seeks to support “traditional values”.

The coordinator of the Russian LGBTQ monitoring program, who asked not to be identified, told Al -Jazeera that before 2022, the majority of violations targeted gay members, “concerned with daily discrimination and institutional discrimination, rather than direct repression.”

Since the embargo amendments to “Gay advertisement“In 2022, followed by the ban on gender transition and the appointment of” international gay movement “as an” extremist organization “in 2023, and now there are at least two -thirds of violations at the hands of the authorities.

The former Soviet Union was one of the first countries in the world to criminalize homosexuality in 1917, as it canceled the laws of Qaisir era, which was rarely imposed. But by the thirties of the last century, during the reign of Joseph Stalin, homosexuality became a threat to the fabric of Soviet society and in 1934, “sodomy” was punished from three to five years of prison.

Later, it was seen as a mental illness, and both gay and lesbians were strongly confined to asylum. Only in 1993, after the collapse of communism, the ban was lifted again.

A new wave of persecution began in 2010 with laws to prevent “gay propaganda”, outwardly to protect children.

The government of President Vladimir Putin depicted LGBTQ rights as a foreign agenda to undermine the traditional family values ​​of Russia.

“The Russian authorities do not distinguish between the trends of children and the” unconventional “orientation, which are clearly evident from the statistics published by the Judicial Administration in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for the year 2023, where statistics were presented to the three articles of 6.21 in one line,” explained Nawil Shaida, head of the regions department in the field of domain.

In late 2023, the Russian Supreme Court ruled the “International Gay Movement” as an “extremist organization”. Of course, there is no such official entity, but this ambiguity creates a very wide range of goals.

“Any organization’s employees [helping LGBTQ] Sponver Monitoring Coordinator said:

For this reason, many initiatives have announced the cessation of work in the country. Some organizations have removed employees from Russia to continue work. There are not many strange initiatives that were left inside the country that do not have to work underground. “

In November last year, the Moscow police raided a series of bars and institutions throughout the city, which is believed to meet the needs of strange customers.

“According to our data, there were at least 43 of them across the country from November 2023 to January 2025.”

“Results differ: From the criminal prosecution of institution owners” to organize and participate in an extremist organization “to the same protocols and fines for advertising. Often, the raids do not formally lead to more persecution, but the institutions that occur in quickly change the coordination of their work and show loyalty to government policies, or just a closure.”

The field monitoring added that those present are sometimes delivered to a military registration office, which means that it can be formulated to fight in Ukraine.

“The published shots often show that visitors to the institution are forced to lie on the cold ground during the raid, which usually lasts for several hours,” they continued.

“Violence can be used, among other things, to persuade the difficult visitors to comply with the illegal police demands: to provide access to the contents of the mobile phone or answer the police interest questions. For example, in one of the institutions, people were forced to squat until their friend gave the police a password. In this case, we talk about torture.”

In addition, law enforcement agencies regularly invaded gay parties and individuals who use dating applications, and arrest them on charges such as drugs or “gay advertising”, which may mean displaying gay symbols or speaking positively about gay relationships.

The campaign targets Queer’s activity in the public field and private life.

In December, Andre Kotov, director of the Men’s Travel Agency in Moscow, was arrested on charges of organizing “extremist activities” and was later found in his cell, as the authorities considered “suicide”.

The independent Russian news site Meduza, which is now working in exile from Latvia, recently I mentioned The authorities seem to collect data collected from the gay limbs – such as fingerprints and DNA samples – as well as medical records of transgender individuals to create a database for LGBTQ.

The purpose of this database is unclear, but the Russian police already have a database of drug addicts, which are alleged to be used to determine the objectives of the judiciary or the implants of evidence when corrupt officers need to reach their shares.

“The data collected can be used to start a major criminal case on the charges of extremism against the” international gay movement “that does not exist, which includes cells in dozens of regions of Russia.”

“It can also be used as a tool for intimidation, which creates an atmosphere of constant fear among strange people; a tool for persecution; LGBT+ recruitment as” voluntary “informants, providing them with a database for cooperation.

Because of the constant pressure, many try to escape from Russia.

“To be a family or unconventional trend in Russia, it may be dangerous to freedom and life in general,” said Anastasia Burakova, human rights lawyer and Kovchg founder, The Ark, an organization that helps Russian immigrants.

“We have temporary emergency accommodations in countries like Serbia and Turkey, and sometimes we are required to provide this emergency residence for LGBTQ. At the present time, we see that there are many requests for such people who are persecuted.”

However, the field is optimistic about the future.

“Despite all the obstacles that the state places before us, we sincerely believe that there is a future for the LGBT+ society in Russia, at least, and on the maximum, there will be acceptance, no discrimination, and so on.”

After all, the political systems are not eternal, and the officials are not immortal. Even if it seems that the future is not hopeless, we believe and try to demonstrate with all our activities that cannot cancel any state’s ban. “

But Michael is more depressed, at least in the short term.

“People will not be able to express themselves, they will try to monitor their behavior to mix with the rules that the state dictates now,” he said.

“Despite sad as it might be, I think suicide statistics will increase.”