Russia enforces anti-LGBT law: individuals facing fines, detention for posting a photograph of an LGBT flag online and wearing rainbow-themed earrings

In Volgograd, a southern region of Russia, a court found a man named Artyom P. guilty of “displaying the symbols of an extremist organisation.” He had uploaded a photo of an LGBT flag, an act he later described as “out of stupidity.” For this transgression, he has been fined 1,000 roubles (approximately £8.69). This conviction, which the man accepted and for which he expressed repentance, comes in the wake of a nationwide ban on the “LGBT movement” by Russia’s supreme court last November, as part of an escalating pattern of restrictions on sexual orientation and gender identity expression.

In a separate case, a court in Nizhny Novgorod, to the east of Moscow, sentenced a woman to five days in administrative detention for wearing earrings shaped like frogs that bore the image of a rainbow. Identified in court documents as Anastasia Yershova, she was confronted in a cafe by a man who filmed himself demanding she remove the earrings, the video of which he later posted online. The incident underscores the increasing aggressiveness of anti-LGBT actions, which have been further incited by the video’s circulation on ultra-conservative blogs.