Russian police raid Moscow gay clubs hours after the Kremlin declared an LGBT network «extremist»

LGBT activists warn that many members of the community will leave the country due to hostile attitudes. Photo: SHAMIL ZHUMATOV/REUTERS

Police Russia raided four gay nightclubs in Moscow, the night after a court effectively banned LGBT activism.

Eyewitnesses said police on Friday photographed the passports of hundreds of nightclub partygoers before allowing people to leave.

“In the middle of the party, they stopped the music and [the police] started entering the halls,” the news service Caution News quoted an eyewitness as saying.

“The scheme was worked out. So similar clubs in St. Petersburg were closed. People were panicking.”

Russian authorities are suspicious of underground bars and music venues they consider pro-Western, and in March police raided and closed several bars in St. Petersburg.

On Thursday, the Russian Supreme Court, in a closed decision, recognized the “international LGBT+ The Movement is an extremist organization as dangerous as a terrorist group and has warned that anyone associated with it faces imprisonment.

Vladimir Putin condemned the LGBT community as “dangerous, like a terrorist group.” Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Pool Sputnik

Gay rights activists in Russia have said there is no special group called LGBT International. Movement. Instead, they said the Kremlin wants to pass a vague and ambiguous regulation aimed at Russia's gay community.

'Fear will start to rise'

'Now fear will start to rise again,' one gay rights activist said remain anonymous. told the Sota news channel.

“Even more people will leave. And those who remain will not be able to feel safe.”

Russian news reports stated that the gay nightclub Central Station in St. Petersburg, which opened in 2005, has already decided that it cannot operate under the new legislation and has announced its closure.

Homosexuality in Russia is decriminalized. in 1993, but under Vladimir Putin, Russia's president since 2000, the gay community has been increasingly marginalized and persecuted.

Homophobic attacks in Russia and other hate crimes are not uncommon.

Homosexual propaganda has been banned in Russia since 2013, and after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 , The Kremlin has stepped up attacks. on what he calls Western «perversions.»

His propaganda portrays Russia as a bastion of «traditional values» against the malign influence of the West.

Activists claim freedom of speech in Russia is a post-Soviet minimum. Opposition to Vladimir Putin's war is banned in Ukraine and civil rights are being restricted.

Over the past few months, Russian regions have made it more difficult for women to have abortions and banned counter-protests.

This pleased the conservative Russian Orthodox Church, which is close to the Kremlin.