Officially, statistics on hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people in Russia have never been collected. By analysing openly published rulings of Russian courts for the past 14 years, we have identified over 1,200 such crimes. Because these are only the cases that reached the court, the real number of crimes can be much higher. The number of crimes, including premeditated group attacks, has significantly increased since the adoption of the discriminatory “gay propaganda” law in 2013.
! Homophobic and transphobic terminology is often used in court rulings and statements by Russian authorities. Among such terms are “homosexualism”, “sex change”, “non-traditional sexual orientation”, and others. This terminology carries negative connotations and stigmatises people. We use these terms in order to provide accurate original quotations from documents.
! Be aware that this text contains descriptions of violence. By default, we have hidden parts with such descriptions. You can decide yourself whether you would like to read violent descriptions by clicking on a plus icon and expanding them.
In short: which conclusions can we draw from our analysis?
Conclusion 1. Hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people in Russia are being committed nationwide, in big cities and villages. We have found evidence of crimes in court rulings of 79 out of 83 Russian regions and 2 occupied Ukrainian regions. These crimes are not stand-alone cases but a systematic nationwide problem.
Conclusion 2. Russian courts systematically ignore hate motives when hearing cases on crimes committed against LGBTQIA+ people. Out of over 1200 cases in our database, only 8 were officially recognised as hate crimes.
Conclusion 3. The number of hate crimes increased after 2013–2014 and stayed relatively high until 2020. As one of the reasons for this rise in crimes, we see the adoption of the anti-LGBTQIA+ law on “gay propaganda”.
Conclusion 4. The number of premeditated hate crimes committed by groups has increased after 2013. Certain crime schemes have been developed by perpetrators to target LGBTQIA+ people specifically. Such schemes are more complex than “ordinary” (unpremeditated) attacks, and they are of greater danger.
Conclusion 5. There is an increase in hate crimes in 2023 compared to 2020–2021. It might indicate the beginning of a new spike of hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people, which is a consequence of the new version of the “gay propaganda” law. To interpret it better, we continue collecting more data.
Context: which anti-LGBTQIA+ laws are currently in force in Russia, and what impact do they have on the rising level of violence?
In recent years, the legislative politics of the Russian government has been aimed at systematically restricting the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, which reinforces discrimination and violence against this group in society. In 2013 the authorities adopted the law that was commonly referred to as the “gay propaganda law”, which outlawed “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”. In 2022, this law was expanded making the spread of such “propaganda” illegal in general, not only among minors. Next year, in 2023, new discriminatory policies were adopted, such as the law prohibiting “sex change” (meaning gender affirmation surgeries and associated legal procedures) and the Supreme Court decision to list the (non-existing) “International LGBT movement” as an extremist organisation.
These laws are of questionable legal nature, illiberal and should not exist in a democratic society. The Venice Comission, the European Court of Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights condemned these policies as they do not comply with international standards of lawmaking and are unnecessary. The broad and fuzzy formulations of these laws let the authorities implement them arbitrarily and selectively. Dozens of individuals and organisations have already been fined for the illegal act of “propaganda” that cannot be determined with precision. Under the “propaganda” definition, judges imposed punishments for publishing dating profiles, wearing rainbow clothing, interviewing an openly gay man, or even personal messages. In March 2024, only a few months after including the “International LGBT movement” in the list of extremist organisations, three people were arrested as organisers of an extremist group because they ran a gay bar. When the Russian state media covers these cases, LGBTQIA+ people are mainly presented as illegal and immoral.
Anti-LGBTQIA+ laws, like many other non-democratic and repressive laws in Russia, serve as a tool for the authoritarian regime to control and manipulate the society. We argue that anti-LGBTQIA+ laws are extra dangerous because they target a specific population and increase the levels of hate and violence against LGBTQIA+ people. As the latest research by the Russian non-government company Levada Center states, 60% of Russians feel “disgust or fear”, “irritation”, or “wariness” towards “people with homosexual orientation”. Comparing these results with the same poll carried out in 2003, such negative attitudes increased by 12%. One of the factors elevating the levels of hate is the “gay propaganda” law. Our research shows the increase in hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people in 2014, after a year since the adoption of the first version of this law, when the number of crimes tripled compared to 2010.
What are anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes?
A hate crime is a criminal act committed with a biased motive based on prejudice or hostility towards a social group. A social group is defined by its stable characteristics, such as nationality, skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, etc. The distinctive feature of hate crimes is that they are not directed at a specific person but at the group as a whole, and the personality of the victim does not play a significant role.
How did we identify anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes in court rulings?
The texts of court rulings are published openly on the official websites of Russian courts and aggregated by paid legal databases. Using both open and commercial sources, we have found court rulings mentioning keywords related to sexual orientation and gender identity. After filtering out irrelevant rulings, we analysed the context of crimes by determining whether they were based on prejudices or hatred against LGBTQIA+ people.
There are certain indicators of hate crimes we looked at in court rulings. Relying on the OSCE guide, we identified indicators belonging to one of the two models: the hostility model and the discriminatory selection model. The hostility model involves anti-LGBTQIA+ statements made by perpetrators immediately before, during, or immediately after the crime. The discriminatory selection model is when perpetrators deliberately target people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ group. Applicable to our research, in the first case, hatred is expressed verbally and openly by perpetrators and documented in the text of court rulings. In the second, hatred may not be expressed verbally, but the crime description makes it clear that victims were targeted because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Below, we provide examples of the two models.
Here and throughout the text, the quotations from court rulings are translated into English from Russian preserving the original meaning as much as possible.
Judgment 1–387/2013 of 11.07.2013 by Butyrsky District Court of Moscow
From the testimony of witness FULL NAME2 <…> M. pointed a knife in his direction, which was covered in blood, and told him to keep quiet or he would kill him too, and also said that homosexuals should not live, using foul language.
In this case, the hate crime indicator is expressed with the words “homosexuals should not live” spoken by the perpetrator immediately after committing the crime.
The ruling of the Criminal Investigative Committee of the Moscow City Court dated May 29, 2019, in case No. 10-7869/2019
[from the testimony of the accused] his friend NAME told him about the possibility of earning money in an unusual way, “catching” people with non-traditional sexual orientation. Since he liked the easy way to make money, he agreed to the offer <…> When they arrived at the specified location, they saw the victim waiting for them. Immediately, NAME1 attacked the victim, hitting him in the face. The victim fell to the ground, and the others began to beat him. At some point, the accused stopped them. He gave the victim water to drink and wash his face and then began recording a video. In the video, NAME admitted that he was a person of non-traditional sexual orientation. Then, NAME began to lose consciousness. One of the guys dragged NAME into the bushes. The accused learned that the victim had died from the police on August 3, 2017.
In this case, perpetrators exploit the vulnerable position of LGBTQIA+ people in Russia to make money, assuming that victims would pay for not disclosing their sexual orientation publicly (by publishing the video recorded during the attack on social media). So, the protected characteristic of sexual orientation plays a significant role in this crime. At the same time, the text of this case does not contain evidence of open manifestation of hatred.
The information about sexual orientation and gender identity indicated in court rulings was relevant to our research when determining motives of hate crimes: whether the accused motivated their actions with hatred towards LGBTQIA+ people as a group. However, we did not aim to establish the sexual orientation or gender identity of victims as individuals. It would be erroneous to categorise victims by sexual orientation or gender identity because such information is obscure, imprecise, and does not come from the victims themselves in most court rulings.
When describing victims, Russian courts often use discriminatory and offensive terminology. One of the common phrases is “non-traditional sexual orientation”. In the majority of the cases in our database, judges describe victims as gay men, and there are a few cases mentioning trans people (case “1-48-2021” from Moscow) and bisexual people (case “1-184/2022” from Moscow Oblast).
How many crimes have we identified?
Our database records 1296 hate crimes extracted from court rulings between 2010 and up until and including 2023. These crimes have led to 1066 victims, of whom 407 were killed. The number of victims is always lower than the number of crimes because attackers often commit multiple crimes against a single victim (for example, a robbery is usually carried out with physical violence). These numbers do not fully represent reality, and it is important to consider the limitations of our study when interpreting them.
Firstly, there are much more crimes taking place. According to the non-government organisation “Russian LGBT Network” , only 2 to 7% of LGBTQIA+ victims are ready to report crimes to the police. Taking this percentage as a reference point, the actual number of hate crimes could be 14 to 50 times larger than we have found in court rulings. Secondly, not all court rulings are available online, so our sample is limited. Thirdly, the year the crime was committed does not always coincide with the year the sentence was passed. We could not establish exactly when the crimes were committed in all cases, because the dates of crimes were often redacted. To overcome the last limitation, we base our conclusions on the yearly dynamics of hate crimes looking at a moving average, which is an average number of crimes for two neighbouring years (for example, for 2012–2013 and for 2013–2014).
Conclusion 1. Hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people in Russia are being committed nationwide, in big cities and villages. We have found evidence of crimes in court rulings of 79 out of 83 Russian regions and 2 occupied Ukrainian regions. These crimes are not stand-alone cases but a systematic nationwide problem.
In which Russian regions have hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people been committed?
Throughout all 14 years, Moscow and the Moscow region stand out with the largest number of victims. Among other regions with large hate crime numbers are Krasnodar Krai, the Republic of Tatarstan, Novosibirsk Oblast, and Kemerovo Oblast.
Below, we present excerpts from two cases. The first is from Makhachkala, the capital and largest city of the Dagestan Republic, and the second comes from Udomlya, a small town in Tver Oblast with a population of 26 thousand.
Judgment 1-162/2021 dated 11.02.2021 by Leninsky District Court of Dagestan
While corresponding with him, he realised that Victim #1 was a person of non-traditional sexual orientation. During the correspondence, they agreed to meet <…> he came to Victim #1, entered the apartment, and began to explain to him that in Dagestan, one cannot engage in non-traditional activities, he could be punished for this. To frighten Victim #1 even more, he said he did not come alone but with the guys. He threatened Victim #1, said that he would punish him, demanded that he transfer money and give him the phone, and then left the apartment.
Judgment by the Udomlya City Court of the Tver Region dated 10.08.2017 in case No. 1-52/2017
From the testimony of Witness No. 11 T.A. at the court hearing, it follows that she saw Witness No. 5 and Y. come out of the house, dragging someone along the ground. As it turned out, they were dragging a man by the legs along the ground, who was wearing a T-shirt, underpants and women’s tights. She noticed that there were signs of beating on the man’s face – the man’s entire face was bloody and swollen. The man’s hands were tied with some kind of rope, from which the man tried to free himself, lying on his back.
She shouted at Witness #5 and Y. to let the man go and stop torturing him. Y. ran up to her in an agitated state and told her in obscene language that the man they were dragging by the legs was of the wrong sexual orientation.
Conclusion 2. Russian courts systematically ignore hate motives when hearing cases on crimes committed against LGBTQIA+ people. Out of over 1200 cases in our database, only 8 were officially recognised as hate crimes.
Judgment 1-22/2020 by Tashtagolsky District Court, Kemerovo Oblast
[circumstances of the case established by the court] A. intentionally caused grievous bodily harm, resulting in the death of the victim B. < … > The motive for committing the crime for A. was a personal dislike, due to the fact that B. is a person with a non-traditional sexual orientation.
In this instance, the court clearly established that the motive for committing the crime was a “personal dislike” due to the victim’s sexuality. However, this did not trigger the implementation of the hate crime provision and was not considered an aggravating circumstance.
Conclusion 3. Hate crimes increased after 2013–2014. The number of crimes increased significantly and remained high until 2020. We believe that one of the reasons for this increase is the adoption of the anti-LGBTQIA+ “gay propaganda” law in 2013.
The total number of crimes, victims, and fatalities we identified in court rulings by year
The number of crimes began to grow in 2013, increasing from 57 in 2012 to 100. The following year, 2014, saw the highest number of crimes to date – 138, three times the number in 2010. This high level continued for the rest of the decade, although crimes gradually declined. The grey line on the bar chart shows an average total of crimes for two neighbouring years, as the year of a court hearing does not always coincide with the year when a crime was committed. Between 2022 and 2023, the average value of crimes indicates a new growth.
In most cases, the hate crimes we have identified were categorised by judges under two chapters of the Russian Criminal Code: crimes against life and health or crimes against property. In the first category, the most common crimes include murder (article 105), intentional infliction of harm (articles 111, 112, 115), and threat of murder (article 119). The crimes in the second category are theft (article 158), fraud (article 159), robbery (article 161), robbery with violence or threat of violence (article 162), extortion (article 163), and destruction or damage of property (article 167).
We associate the increase in hate crimes in 2013–2014 with the adoption of the discriminatory “gay propaganda” law in 2013. The adoption of this law was a part of the general state policy of preserving the so-called “traditional values” and a targeted campaign to restrict the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, increasing negative attitudes and violence against LGBTQIA+ people.
Conclusion 4. The number of premeditated hate crimes committed by groups has increased after 2013. Certain crime schemes have been developed by perpetrators to target LGBTQIA+ people specifically. Such schemes are more complex than “ordinary” (unpremeditated) attacks, and they are of greater danger.
What types of crimes are committed against LGBTQIA+ people?
We divide the hate crimes we identified into two categories by crime preparation: unpremeditated and premeditated crimes. The first includes crimes committed by individuals with no preparation, such as attacks on a street triggered by someone’s (non-heterosexual) appearance or behaviour. In the second category, there are crimes that are prepared involving such elements as search for accomplices and targeted selection of victims.
Premeditated crimes are of greater danger to LGBTQIA+ people as a group because such crimes have more organised and systematic nature. Often, premeditated crimes are organised by a group of perpetrators who specifically target LGBTQIA+ people and develop schemes, such as “fake dates” (also known as “gay hunts” through dating apps), to commit serial crimes.
As the bar chart below illustrates, first, unpremeditated crimes were more common. However, the situation changed in 2017, when premeditated crimes became more widespread. On the bar chart, there is also the “Other” category, in which we included different types of crimes, for example the so-called “gay panic defense” cases. In these cases, a defendant claims to have committed assault or murder, because of unwanted same-sex sexual advances. We included such cases in our database only if they had clear indications of disproportionate violence against the victim and bias indicators.
After the adoption of the “gay propaganda” law in 2013, the number of both unpremeditated and premeditated crimes increased
Below, there are two examples of unpremeditated crimes from court rulings. In both cases, attackers perceived the victim’s sexual orientation as “non-traditional” or “not right” because of appearance or behaviour.
Judgment 1-7/2021 dated 11.02.2021 Komsomolsky District Court of Ivanovo
[from the testimonies of the victims] They went behind the house to the garages to the road. They saw two unknown men, they approached them and started a conversation. They [the perpetrators] told him that he was of a non-traditional sexual orientation in a rude, obscene manner. He was wearing a green cardigan, green sneakers, a white scarf, he had an earring in his ear. <…> They were all intoxicated, aggressive. He fell on the grass from the blow, he was on the grass for a minute, he didn’t lose consciousness
Judgment 1-87/2021 of 03/15/2021 Central District Court of Kemerovo
There were two guys standing near the store, when he came closer to them, he saw one holding the other by the hand, he asked them if they were of the right sexual orientation, they had a conflict. He struck them because of hostile attitudes
The alleged pedophile is interrogated on camera, with the microphone replaced by a dildo or toilet brush. Tesak asks him to introduce himself, show his passport on camera, give his address, say whether he is married and has children. After the public shaming stage, the questions are aimed at forcing the alleged pedophile to admit his intentions when he meets him: “Are you a pedophile or a faggot?” […] “Congratulations, you have just completely ruined your life,” Tesak jokes while filming his latest victim <…> The alleged pedophile is often forced to call loved ones – his wife, children, brother or employer – and confess his guilt on camera. His head is sometimes shaved, or his hair is dyed green. Homophobic messages (“Fuck LGBT” or an image of the rainbow flag) are written on his forehead. He is forced to simulate fellatio with a dildo, jump and sing songs. Sometimes he is filmed naked. He is beaten, yelled at and treated roughly. The punishment, known as “urine therapy,” is a common practice in all Occupy Pedophilia videos.
Tesak promoted a specific type of attacks – “fake dates”, which was used by many of his imitators. Usually, several attackers are involved in a crime. They start with creating a profile on a dating app or website and, under the pretext of a date, arrange a meeting. During the “date”, the attackers extort money for “non-disclosure” of sexual orientation, rob and assault victims. According to our data, “fake dates” are the most common type of premeditated crimes against LGBTQIA+. In most of the court rulings, they are categorised as robberies, but in some cases dating violence resulted in death, as in the example below.
Judgment 2-7/2014 from 18.02.2014 Moscow City Court
Defendant M pleaded guilty at the hearing and testified that he met K in 2010. <…> M was experiencing financial difficulties, which K knew about, and the latter suggested robbing people of non-traditional sexual orientation by finding them on the Internet, to which M agreed. <…> In carrying out the plan, they met P, who invited them to the apartment, where they spent some time talking. <…> M entered the bedroom and saw P lying face down on the bed, his arms and legs tied with what he thought were belts. K said that he used a chokehold on P, and he lost consciousness for some time, but would soon regain consciousness. After this, together with K, they left the apartment with the stolen property, took a taxi to Komsomolskaya Square, where they sold the stolen goods for about 20 thousand rubles, which they divided equally. He had no agreement with K about the murder of the victim; these actions of the latter were a surprise to him and are an excess of the perpetrator.
Conclusion 5. There is an increase in hate crimes in 2023 compared to 2020–2021. It might indicate the beginning of a new spike of hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people, which is a consequence of the new version of the “gay propaganda” law. To interpret it better, we continue collecting more data.
Shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and on the backdrop of the authoritarian regime gaining more power, the Russian government passed a new round of particularly harsh anti-LGBTQIA+ laws. First and foremost, it is the law expanding the definition of “gay propaganda” and increasing penalties for it. Besides, there were new offences introduced for “propaganda” of paedophilia, gender transition among minors, and “refusal to childbearing”.
A new wave of hate crimes followed the enactment of these laws. Our data shows an increase in violence against LGBTQIA+ in 2023: 96 crimes, compared to 74 and 72 in 2021 and 2022, respectively, including 20 fatalities (also higher than in two previous years). The increasing level of anti-LGBTQIA+ violence and threats in 2023 was also recorded in the joint report by the Russian human-right organisations “Coming Out” and “Sphere”. Their online poll results showed that 43,5% of participants (2045 people) faced violence or oppression because of “sexual orientation and/or being a transgender”. According to the report, in 2022, that number was 30%.
Another law adopted in 2023 was the so-called “gender transition ban” that deprived transgender people of access to vital medical care. Now, both medical and legal procedures needed for gender transition are prohibited in Russia. That same year, on November 30, the Supreme Court of Russia labelled the “International LGBT social movement” as extremist. It represents a new stage in the repression of the LGBTQIA+ community: now, there is criminal liability for participating in such a “movement”.
There is a high risk that more and more hate crimes are being committed against LGBTQIA+ people as a consequence of the new discriminatory laws. We are continuing to record and document such cases. Monitoring this situation is crucial for understanding the scale of violence in the absence of official statistics.
As long as the anti-LGBTQIA+ policy exists in Russia, we are continuing our work
On November 15, 2022, a group of perpetrators from Nizhnevartovsk, a small provincial city 3,000 kilometres northeast of Moscow, organized a series of attacks on LGBTQIA+ people using the “fake date” scheme. They beat and robbed a man and tried to kidnap him, taking him in a car to an unknown location, but — fortunately for the victim — the police stopped them for speeding. In court, the perpetrators justified their actions by referring to the anti-LGBTQIA+ political narrative of the Russian authorities. Here is an excerpt from the court ruling:
Judgment of the Nizhnevartovsk City Court of July 26, 2023 in case 1–865/2023
During the conversation, he [the accused] began to make claims against Victim #1, that he is of non-traditional orientation and is a disgrace to their people. Because such direction of sexual minorities is undesirable at the state level, and even their President has repeatedly said that there would never be an LGBT movement in the Russian Federation and that family values must be protected. Also, during the conversation, he once hit the victim in the face with the palm of his right hand. Then he demanded 30,000 rubles from the victim for non-disclosure of information about his non-traditional orientation.
A 2-year suspended sentence is the punishment the perpetrators got.
This case is just one of the 1,296 hate crimes we collected between 2010 and 2023. It is a glimpse into the reality in which people face violence fueled by state rhetoric. Such cases are not random acts of violence but a byproduct of the Russian government’s discriminatory policies.
We are continuing to collect data on cases of discrimination and violence against LGBTQIA+ people in Russia. It is necessary for future public discussion of these harmful consequences, as well as the revision and condemnation of discriminatory laws.
The Grey Rainbow project is a collaboration between researchers and Dataout, a foundation that helps journalists, researchers, and human rights advocates report on discrimination and improve the legal and societal environment for LGBTQIA+ people and everyone who faces injustices based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics or SOGIESC.
greyrainbow@dataout.org
In the design of this website, we use illustrations taken from the watercolour series “Veshchdoc” (“Physical evidence”) by the artist Polina Zaslavskaya, who has kindly granted us permission for their use. The artist retains all rights to the images.