The travel agency offered tours aimed exclusively at men, and this was sufficient to attract the attention of the police who applied new Russian laws that limit the rights of gays.
One night in December, the agents stormed the apartment of the agency owner and tied it, he said following a court.
“Fifteen people came to my house at night,” said the owner, I would go kotov. “They were beating me in the face, kicking and leaving bruised.” His comments were reported by the Russian media and confirmed by his lawyer.
Kotov said that the officers were pressing him to “confess” to manage a travel agency aimed at gays, which he denied. The officers continued to beat him, he said, and they said to him: “No trip for gays”.
A few weeks later, Mr. Kotov, then 48 years old, was found dead in his prison cell. Prison officials told his mother that he cut himself with a razor, said his lawyer, Leysan Mannapova. The circumstances of his death could not be determined independently and the Russian officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Kotov’s death reflects an increasingly hard repression in Russia on the rights of LGBTQ people who accelerated since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin has played the new restrictions – and the war – as part of a wider battle to maintain “traditional Russian values”.
In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court designated the “LGBTQ International Movement” as “extremist organization” on par with artists of the caliber of Al Qaeda or of the Islamic State. Under the laws that aim for extremist groups, activists for homosexual rights, their lawyers or others involved in the efforts to support LGBTQ people could face convictions of six to 10 years.
This led to a wave of repression against people and LGBTQ groups, with the police that broke into gay night clubs and investigators who targeted normal Russians, according to community members and groups such as Human Rights Watch.
Last year at least 12 criminal investigations were launched on the accusations of LGBTQ extremism, according to the defense group of the rights of the Russian prisoners Ovd-Info.
Denis Olyenik, an executive director of Using Out, who helps LGBTQ people in Russia, said that the pressure of the authorities initially focused on groups of rights and activists.
“Now, repression is reaching people, clubs, normal parts – has influenced the community that previously would also have moved away from the defense of rights,” he said.
Homosexuality was decriminalized Russia in 1993, inspiring a lively gay scene that included celebrities that spoke openly about their sexuality and the institution of gay clubs. Tatu, a pop group whose two female members pretended to be a lesbian couple, kissing among the songs, was even chosen by the state -owned television to represent Russia in international competitions.
But in 2013, Putin opened a save against gays when he signed a bill that showed the spread of what he described as “gay propaganda” – which includes material that makes “non -traditional attractive relationships” – to minors. In 2022, Russia introduced fines for the promotion of “gay propaganda”.
Then came the sentence of the 2023 court which led to the current repression.
After Mr. Kotov, the travel agent, was arrested, was also accused of producing images of sexual abuse on minors, but his lawyer was unable to review the case materials on this charge.
During his arrangement hearing in December, an investigator told the Court, without providing further details, that the images on Mr. Kotov’s phone showed that they had committed a crime “aimed at the constitutional order and state security”.
A few weeks later, Mr. Kotov was dead.
Just two days earlier, a psychological evaluation for Mr. Kotov did not show suicide tendencies, said Mrs. Mannapova, her lawyer.
Mr. Kotov’s mother asked public ministries to go on with his posthumous case in order to be canceled by the accusations against him, said his lawyer.
“It was not absolutely clear for him how to organize travel for men can be considered to create an extremist group,” he said.
The night after the Supreme Court put the LGBTQ movement out of the move in 2023, Sergei Artyomov, a 36 -year -old Moscow gay, said he and his friends were targeted in a police raid in a Moscow night club. The officers blocked the exits, they made sure that the users are against a wall and then wrote their identity details, he said.
Nobody was arrested, but Mr. Arthyomov, who worked as a television producer, said the experience shocked him. He said he had already thought of leaving Russia as he wanted to live like an openly gay man and that Raid strengthened his determination.
“I knew that things would go only worse,” he said. “There is no more gray area. They call you people’s enemy, and that’s it.”
He left just before Christmas for Spain, where he said that he had been granted asylum.
The anti-gay campaign led by the Kremlin was mounted by vigilant groups, as well as local and state media.
In the remote Eastern Siberian city of Yakutia, Pryany Yakutsk, a famous media channel on Telegram, launched alarm during the holidays on the “dissolutionary and corruption of men who take place under the nose of the police and Yakutsk officials”.
He published two photos about a ricker from a night club party that described what seemed to be naked -chest women, one of whom on a naked man. The message on the Telegram channel said that the party characterized what she called “disguised artists” from Thailand.
A court later fined the club 250,000 rubles, or about $ 2,800, for violating public order since its customers were “in a state to undress that insults human dignity and promotes non -traditional sexual relations”.
The Russian community, a nationalist group that is established as social vigilants, has also published photos and videos from the police raids. Last year, the group published a video of a raid on an LGBTQ nightclub in the city of Orenburg who showed several young people lying on the floor, face down, arrested.
A criminal proceeding against the owner, the manager and the artistic director of the club was later brought, which are still awaiting trial.
The state media also bombed the Russians with messages on the virtues of heterosexual families with children. At the beginning of this year, Putin issued an order for his government to process a strategy to promote families with multiple children.
Since the Kremlin introduced the first anti-gay bill in 2013, the number of Russians who think that gays should not have the same rights as others has increased from 47 to 62 %, according to the independent survey Levada.
The young Russians are even more accepting LGBTQ people than old ones, they show the polls of opinion, but have also felt constant complaints in their media in the last year.
“That gay and trans hatred stream that continues to pour from all the media will have consequences,” said Tatyana Vinnichenko, a veteran LGBTQ activist who lives in exile in Lithuania.
The trans community was a particular objective of the authorities, with the adoption of a law in 2023 which prohibits trans health care and the change in gender identifiers in official documents.
The last round of repressions has stimulated a silent exodus of gay and trans people from Russia, activists say.
But Tahir, a 25 -year -old gay who asked that his family name be held back for fear of criminal proceeding, said he was not intended to leave.
“I certainly know that things will worsen,” he said. “But I don’t want to leave. This country is mine as much as it is for others.”