Russian Ministry of (in)Justice targeted them as “extremists”
London, UK – 6 August 2026
‘They Try to Erase Us, But We Keep Speaking Out’: Inside Russia’s Largest Queer Media After the ‘Extremism’ Ban
The story of Parni+, the largest Russian-language LGBTQ+ media. The Russian authorities have branded it “extremist”, but failed to silence it.
On April 23, 2026, a district court in Russia’s Oryol region granted a request by the Ministry of Justice to designate the LGBTQ+ media Parni+ an extremist organization, effectively banning its activities inside Russia. Among the evidence of its “extremism” were reports documenting discrimination, articles about self-acceptance, and personal stories of queer people from Russian regions. The team’s response was brief: we are not stopping.
The ruling is neither the first nor, evidently, the last blow against an organization that began in 2008 as a modest website with information about HIV before growing into the largest Russian-language LGBTQ+ media platform. Over the past years its staff have endured virtually every stage of Russia’s campaign against civil rights activists: website blocks, “foreign agent” status, the forced closure of the NGO behind the project, the emigration of the entire team. And now, the “extremist” label.
The interviews below bring together five members of the team; founder and editor-in-chief Yevgeny Pisemsky, journalist and activist Yaroslav Rasputin, peer counselor and community services expert Damir Musin, journalist Vadim Vaganov, and staff writer Itil Tyomnaya. Together they describe what it means to run a queer media when state repression is no longer something they report on, but the backdrop against which they live daily.
🔎 Background: Russia’s Crackdown on LGBTQ+ People
“LGBT propaganda” law. It was introduced in 2013 and originally banned “the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. But in December 2022, the ban was significantly expanded to cover adults as well. Nowadays, virtually any positive – or even neutral – reference to LGBTQ+ people in the media, books, films, or advertising can be punished. Individuals face fines of up to 400,000 roubles (about $5,140), while organizations and companies can be fined up to five million roubles (about $64,200). The state media regulator, Roskomandzor, also has the authority to block websites without any court order.
The Supreme Court ruling, November 2023. Russia’s Supreme Court declared the non-existent “International LGBT Movement” an extremist organization. This means that authorities interpret virtually any form of queer activism as participation in an extremist organization, akin to terrorists. The criminal offence is punishable by up to twelve years in prison (Chapter 282, Article 2 of the Criminal Code). Meanwhile rainbow flags have effectively been treated as extremist symbols, while donations to LGBTQ+ organizations may be prosecuted as finanding extremism.
The “foreign agent” status. The designation imposes sweeping restrictions. Those listed must attach lengthy disclaimers to every publication or post, submit regular financial reports to the Ministry of Justice, and are barred from advertising, teaching, and holding public positions. In practice, most companies avoid any association with a “foreign agent”, while repeated administrative penalties for failing to comply with the law ultimately lead to criminal prosecution. As a result, many individuals with this status have chosen to leave the country.
Phoenix PLUS. An HIV-service NGO based in the city of Oryol and headed by Yevgeny Pisemsky, under which Parni+ developed. The organization was among the pioneers of instant HIV testing in Russia and received the United Nations’ Red Ribbon Award for its work. In 2020, however, the Ministry of Justice claimed that articles published by Parni+ on health and LGBTQ+ issues constituted “foreign influence” and added Phoenix PLUS to the register of “foreign agents”. The organization was forced to dissolve on December 1, 2021.
How They Joined the Team
Originally conceived as an outlet providing information on HIV, Parni+ gradually evolved into a media covering all aspects of queer life.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “I founded Parni+ in 2008. AIDS.ru was a major inspiration, but I always felt that it didn’t fully address the needs of our audience – gay and bisexual men, trans people, and HIV-positive people in the community. The language wasn’t right, the focus wasn’t there. People needed to feel that they were being spoken to directly. And it is impossible to talk about HIV without talking about stigma, discrimination, laws. A person does not exist simply as a “patient”. They live in a society where they may be feared, humiliated, pushed out of their family or driven from their profession.”
Very different paths led people to Parni+. Some had known the project for years before becoming part of it.
Vadim Vaganov: “I’d known Parni+ long before I joined the team. I had a fridge magnet at home that read ‘Love Conquers All’ with the Parni+ logo on it. I’d gotten it when I tested through the SAFE BOX HIV testing programme. Then, in 2021, I saw a job opening, applied, and everything snowballed from there. I never imagined I would one day become part of the same rainbow-colored team whose magnet had been hanging in my kitchen for years.”
For Yaroslav Rasputin, joining the team coincided with leaving Russia.
Yaroslav Rasputin: “I joined in December 2022. Zhenya [Pisemsky] ans I had worked together before, back when I was a blogger and worked for the AIDS.CENTER Foundation. And when Russia tightened the ‘gay propaganda’ law and it became clear that I had to leave the country, I offered Zhenya to work together. I knew that Parni+ was the largest queer media [in Russia], but hadn’t realized just how large it was. The website has around four million visits every month, an astonishing audience. As for the risks, I didn’t think about them enough. Foreign agents, sure, but by 2022, it could hardly surprise anyone.”
Damir Musin joined the team in August 2023 as a peer counselor, bringing nearly two decades of experience working in NGOs..
Damir Musin: “For years I’d promised myself never to stay too long with one organization, wary of becoming part of a team because of previous bad experience. But everything came together at Parni+: the mission, the people, the non-toxic atmosphere. We don’t just work together – we’re friends.”
Itil Tyomnaya describes her own path quite matter-of-factly: “I can’t remember when it happened exactly, but at some point media outlets started asking me for brief comments, then for more detailed opinion, and somehow it spiraled into this. I’d been following Parni+ for years by that time. It was the only professional queer news outlet. There used to be others, but they weren’t as modern. Now there are more modern ones, but none as professional.”
When the Pressure Began to Mount
For Pisemsky, the first warning sign came long before the “foreign agent” era.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “When Dmitry Medvedev’s wife launched some HIV awareness project, I published a very critical article. The campaign was poorly executed and, frankly, amateurish. The next day I got a phone call from someone I respected enormously and who urged me to take the piece down. To my shame, I did. That was the first time – and the last. It was then that I realized: if you agree to stay silent once, people will ask you to stay silent again and again. And every time they’ll tell you, ‘Now just isn’t the right moment’.”
The pressure came in waves, and it wasn’t always the state applying it.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “I faced pressure from donors. That’s even more painful. You expect censorship from the government, at least. You don’t expect it from people who are supposedly there to support civil society. On two separate occasions, donors asked me to remove articles. I refused. Independence isn’t tested only when the government comes after you. It’s also tested when the pressure comes from your own side.”
For others, the turning point came when national TV channels began mentioning the media by name.
Vadim Vaganov: “The first obvious warning sign was seeing our team attacked on national TV. Once they begin talking about you there negatively, you know consequences are coming. The only question isn’t whether the authorities will take a closer interest – it’s when.”
Yaroslav Rasputin: “It wasn’t until 2023, when national TV news ran reports about us as ‘LGBT extremists’, that I fully grasped the scale of what was happening. By then I had already emigrated, and this dulled the emotional impact of the news. But it also meant less people ready to work with us. NGOs in Russia avoid us like the plague. I understand why, they’re making the only rational decision available, but gathering information has become far more difficult.”
Damir, who had spent two decades working in the non-profit sector, isn’t scared of this pressure: “I told the state where to go a long time ago. I always knew it could come after me. At least for twelve years.”
For Itil, however, the pressure is different, not a threat from the outside, but an erosion within.
Itil Tyomnaya: “The pressure affected me not because I had to take extra precautions, it was something more personal. People, including those still in Russia, continue to explore their identities, debate ideas, develop new concepts. But while I used to find those conversations interesting in the past, now, against the constant stream of news, almost all of it feels insignificant.”
Extremists? Who, Us?
By the time the Ministry of Justice filed its lawsuit, few people in the team were surprised.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “It didn’t feel unexpected. More like another step, another way of making our work toxic for everyone around us. The worst part isn’t the fact that the label affects me. It’s what it does to everyone else. If someone in Russia shares our post or article, writes to us, sends us their story, they’re now taking a potential risk. The state is trying to make the very connection between us and our audience dangerous.”
Each member of the team explains the absurdity of the accusation in their own way.
Itil Tyomnaya: “To someone outside Russia, it’s enough to explain why an authoritarian state would want to ban queer media. Journalism is inherently political. It’s much harder to explain why thirteen of the seventeen known criminal cases brought under Russia’s ‘LGBT extremism’ charges have nothing to do with politics whatsoever. And all seventeen cases were opened before a single human rights organization had been designated extremist.”
Yaroslav Rasputin: “The absurdity becomes obvious when you compare it with other cases. The Taliban is no longer considered an extremist organization, the Russian Community[1], a nationalist group whose members assault migrants, is allowed to patrol the streets. Yet we are the extremists, simply because we write about LGBTQ+. What does the word ‘extremism’ even mean in Russia now? I don’t understand anymore. Now that the court has officially declared us ‘extremists’, I’ve found myself wondering: what’s next? What am I supposed to expect after this? It’s not that I can’t go on, I can. But… You could say that I don’t understand how one is supposed to live up to this status. It’s almost insulting to earn that label for nothing more than writing articles, reporting the news, and talking to people. And I have no idea what genuinely extremist I can do. So it’s an unexpected identity crisis.”
Vadim Vaganov: “Extremists? Give me a break. It’s complete nonsense. This status is nothing more than a branding iron, a tool the state uses to mark anyone it wants to silence. One day these rulings will be overturned for what they are: discriminatory and unconstitutional.”
Drawing on his experience with NGOs, Damir views the repression as part of a broader political strategy. As he explains, the authorities score political points by demonizing minorities, while being driven by demographic anxieties and paranoid about an imagined “fifth column”. “Same-sex relationships aren’t illegal. Even the most conservative politicians understand that queer people have always been there and always will. The campaign isn’t against people as such, it’s against what they call an ‘ideology’. The problem is that the entire campaign is built on false premises.”
The emotional response among the team is virtually the same: exhaustion.
Itil Tyomnaya: “I even felt a certain sense of relief. Something like, ‘Well, at least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.’ I don’t think I’m capable of feeling much about it personally now. I can only register the facts, almost as if they’re happening to someone else.”
Yaroslav Rasputin: “I’ve developed a psychological block around the whole subject. At first I felt nothing, just chuckled. Then the exhaustion hit. Sometimes it feels as though they aren’t even trying to achieve anything, they simply enjoy making people’s lives miserable.”
Damir Musin: “I’d call it plain anger. Calm, rational anger.”
Exile is Different For Everyone
The entire team lives outside Russia these days. But emigration means something different for each of them.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “I’d always wanted to live abroad for a while. But I never wanted to leave like this. I had just twenty four hours to get out after criminal charges were opened against me. I bought a ticket, flew to the UK and applied for political asylum. The hardest paint isn’t adapting to a new country. It’s losing the professional and personal life you’ve spent years building. I had to shut down Phoenix PLUS, an organization I was genuinely proud of. You don’t just lose the place where you lived, you lose a part of your own biography.”
Itil had kept an “emergency go bag” packed since 2019, while still hoping she would never need it.
Itil Tyomnaya: “In 2022, a week after the full-scale invasion began, my apartment was searched. The warrant had actually been issued three months earlier. At that point it became obvious that I would have to leave. I’d correctly guessed how quickly the repression would escalate and planned my departure just before the State Duma’s autumn session. I could easily have miscalculated. I left my entire life behind in Russia: my career, all the friends I’d been making since I was thirteen, the person closest to me, and countless things that can never be replaced, including a comic book about my own life that I’d been drawing since I was sixteen. I loved that life and still grieve its loss. No matter how comfortable my life is now, that grief doesn’t simply disappear.”
Damir had the hardest journey: four years of moving between shelters in Georgia, Montenegro, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Armenia, and Spain.
Damir Musin: “My emigration has been hell. I lived in shelters, at times I went hungry, buying the cheapest sprouting potatoes I could find and eating only it. In Madrid, I spent three months living in a homeless shelter, where my health finally collapsed. I fainted, suffered a hypertensive crisis, and my asthma became much worse. The lowest point came when I was robbed. They took my backpack with every document I had, my laptop, and a hard drive containing twenty years of work. Without charities and ordinary people I would have ended up dying on the streets of Madrid. People often say, ‘At least once you’ve left Russia you’re safe’, to which I say: try and live in exile with no savings and no support. The only thing you really have is freedom. In every other sense, your life is reset to zero. Out here, we are safe only from the Russian state.”
Yaroslav answers the same question far more briefly: I thought I was going to lose my mind. In the end, I suppose I did.” And adds: “I am indeed safer here than in Russia. But exile brings new kinds of risks. The biggest one is that any country could deport me. No country other than Russia has any obligation to protect me – and Russia does, but it won’t.”
Itil sums up the reality of emigration with dry irony, recalling two videos (1, 2) that helped her through the process: “In emigration people’s lives often become better, but they feel much worse. So when I feel low, I remind myself that this isn’t an accurate reflection of my circumstances, but simply how an uprooted person who hasn’t yet adapted is expected to be.”
The State’s Long Arm
The Russian authorities continue trying to reach those who speak out openly. For Vadim Vaganov, the number of legal cases against him has already climbed into the dozens.
Vadim Vaganov: “I’ve been charged in five separate cases under the ‘foreign agent’ legislation and seven more for ‘LGBT propaganda’. In May, the authorities also opened a criminal case against me and placed me on Russia’s federal wanted list. They’re very fearful of Russian LGBTQ+ instructors, apparently. But these cases don’t affect just me. My uncle was turned down for a government job because he has a ‘foreign agent’ relative. Border guards questioned one of my friends after finding my contact details in his phone. More recently, another friend was added to Russia’s register of terrorists and extremists. He believes that it was partly because he’d publicly mentioned my Telegram channel and spoken in my support. At the very least, investigators questioned him specifically about his connections to me. The state is trying to make the very fact of knowing you toxic.”
Damir lists the practical consequences of the extremist status: the inability to open a bank account, the risk of extradition from countries that have an extradition treaty with Russia, the inability to visit the countries within the Eurasian Economic Union. “I worry that I bring trouble to the people close to me. But at least I don’t have any property in Russia.”
Itil speaks of another kind of tension, from within the RUssian political emigrant community itself.
Itil Tyomnaya: “I’ve only ever had to hide my connection to Parni+ and my queer identity from other Russian-speaking emigrants. Because even among political activists homophobia is widespread. Just because someone left Russia because they’re against the war doesn’t mean they aren’t homophobic. At first I avoided contact with Russian-speaking communities altogether.”
The Psychological Cost
By this point, the irony and activist bravado had all but disappeared. I saw ordinary people, deeply exhausted, burned out, and worn down by years of relentless pressure and uncertainty.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “When we were first designated foreign agents, it broke something inside me. I started seeing a psychologist and spent nearly five years in weekly therapy. That crisis changed my priorities. Work used to occupy almost every corner of my life. Now my emotional well-being has become nearly as important. Although there’s still a voice inside me saying, “Zhenya, you have to do more, we’re not doing enough.’ But now there’s another voice, saying, ‘If you fall apart completely, you won’t be able to help anyone.’ We work in the sphere where simply staying mentally well has become a professional skill in its own right.”
Damir Musin: “I’m burned out fully. Four years of exile have left nothing untouched. It’s like a phone that you plug in for five minutes, only to find the battery empty again immediately. The state of a drained battery. Alcohol used to help, but it only makes things worse. Maybe going for a walk helps a little, that’s it.”
Yaroslav Rasputin: “It’s very hard. I am exhausted, and my depression has become more severe. I see my psychotherapist regularly and take medication under supervision. Am I coping? Not sure, so it’s difficult to say.”
Vadim Vaganov: “Emotionally, it sucks, because you see just how profoundly unjust all of this is, how cynically the state has turned helping your own community into ‘extremism’.”
Then there is guilt. Itil speaks about it without hesitation.
Itil Tyomnaya: “I carry an enormous sense of guilt towards both our readers and the rest of the team. I’m completely burned out now and work mechanically. There are countless stories I never wrote simply because I no longer had the strength.”
Rasputin describes a different kind of guilt, the guilt of privilege: “What weighs on me is knowing that, difficult as emigration is, I’m still relatively safe. I know so many remarkable people in Russia who need that safety more than ever, yet they never had the chance to leave. I wish I could ‘break off’ this safety into pieces and share it.”
What Keeps the Team Together
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “A sense of purpose. We know that there are people in Russia reading us, and they are frightened and lonely, they need to see that someone is still speaking to them in a normal human voice. Over the past four years, only one person left the team. In such circumstances, leaving isn’t betrayal. If someone decides to leave, I think, ‘Thank you for staying with us for as long as you could’.”
Damir Musin: “For every one of us, Parni+ is a personal project, not just job. This is the glue holding us together. We genuinely believe in what we’re doing.”
Itil Tyomnaya: “Parni+ is the only team where I’ve ever truly felt at home. This is largely thanks to Zhenya, though others deserve credit too. Not because they’re always cheerful and sweet, but because they’re fundamentally good people. Nothing the state has done could change it.”
Yaroslav honestly acknowledges the other side of the story: “If anything, the pressure pulls people apart. Everyone is tired, and we’ve run out of new words of encouragement for one another. We’ve already said everything there is to say.” But he is quick to mention solidarity: “We are not alone. At least ten more LGBT organizations are expected to be designated ‘extremist’. We have each other, and we understand exactly what everyone else is going through.”
Why It Matters
Nearly two decades after Parni+ was founded, each member of the team describes its mission differently. Yet they all arrive at the same conclusion.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “By branding us ‘extremists’, the state is trying to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life. It wants people to once again sit alone with its anxiety somewhere in Russia and think, ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with me.’ So our mission has become even clearer. Parni+ isn’t just a website, it’s a connection for the community.”
Damir Musin: “We are the voice of the Russian-speaking LGBT community. Only queer media operating in exile can truthfully report about queer lives in Russia today. Legally, they can’t destroy us: the website will remain. It may stop updating, but not because of the authorities, rather, because we’ve run out of funding. Right now the danger is very real.”
Itil Tyomnaya: “Parni+ informs the community and gives people a place where they can speak for themselves. It’s both a record of reality and something that shapes reality. This mission hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s become even more important. In a strange way, we’re even fortunate that the entire team was already in exile. Of course, it’s not ‘luck’, it’s just the consequence of repression. But it gives us more freedom than if some of us had still been living in Russia.”
Vadim Vaganov: “We exist so that LGBTQ+ people who speak Russian still have a voice, their own space, their own corner of freedom. The future may be more cautious and less public. Вut we cannot be destroyed. The state can block sites and attach labels. What it cannot do is make LGBTQ+ people cease to exist.”
The team speaks about the future with little optimism, but with no resignation either.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “They can block the website. They can declare an organization extremist. They can open criminal cases. But they can’t destroy people’s need to be themselves, to love, to find others like them. What we do doesn’t exist because there’s a legal entity called Parni+, it exists because there are people who need it. And as long as they exist, so will we, in whatever form becomes possible.”
Damir Musin: “Legally, we’re already beyond the reach of Russian law. The only real threat isn’t the government, it’s money. Financing. If Parni+ ever goes silent, it won’t be because the state has won, it’ll be because we’ve run out of resources. And, to be honest, that would be the most painful outcome of all.”
To Those Who Are Afraid
Perhaps the most pressing question of all is this: what would the team say to a queer person in Russia reading Parni+ who is afraid? Their voices now are not weary and become firm again.
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “A community begins when, in a difficult moment, someone refuses to stay alone. When one person is able to help another. When trust, memory, and solidarity survive, and people feel: they try to pull us apart, but we still keep finding ways to stay connected.”
Damir Musin: “Reading articles published by an extremist organization, using a VPN and other tools that protect anonymity, is not a crime in itself. Which is why digital security is more important than ever.”
Yaroslav Rasputin:”I’m afraid too, even in emigration, and understand how empty phrases like ‘it’s okay to be afraid’ sound. What’s okay is to want to live without constant pressure and risk, to stay informed, to pay attention to what’s happening, to do everything you can to protect yourself while remaining connected to your community. We’re working on ways to help our readers do exactly that. And people can tell us their story and speak to us via email or our Telegram bot.”
If You Could Speak to Your Younger Self
What would they say to themselves on the day this journey began?
Yevgeny Pisemsky: “I would tell my 2008 self to keep going. It will be hard, sometimes very hard. There will be censorship, pressure, the closure of your organization, the ‘foreign agent’ status, ‘extremism’, exhaustion, and moments when you’ll want to give up. But it will still matter. And I’m proud of the person I was then – and the person I am now.”
Yaroslav Rasputin: “Maybe I would give myself a few practical tips. And tell myself what was coming. Although it wouldn’t have mattered much.”
Damir Masin: “Do what you must, let come what may.”
Itil’s answer is laconic and captures everything the team has been talking about throughout our conversation: exhaustion, determination, burnout, and the inability to stop.
Itil Tyomnaya: “Keep working and don’t stop.”
Parni+ is still working. Its website remains online, new stories continue to appear, and the community that the Russian state has worked so hard to erase continues to exist, on both sides of the border. They try to erase us. But we keep speaking out.
Written by Sasha Tumanov
[1] The Russian Community (Русская община) is a far right pro-government group established in late 2020. Its members regularly carry out anti-migrant raids (often with the city administrations and the police). They strongly criticize migrants, intervenes in local disputes, and often demands the cancellation of concerts or the verification of people whose views they consider offensive to “traditional values”. The group advocates the “revival of communality and conciliarity”, actively supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the official political course. It is believed the Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev is behind the organization. Human rights activists and independent media note that it acts as a “parallel police force” without legitimate authority, restricts freedom of speech and uses violence against those who do not share its views.