Here’s a sentence nobody expected to write in 2026: Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws are now fining homophobes.

The independent outlet Mediazona has documented a run of cases in which people who were mocking or attacking LGBTQ+ people were punished anyway, because their posts showed a rainbow flag. Meduza picked up the report on October 29.

It’s tempting to laugh. But the joke isn’t really on the homophobes. It’s a window into how this law actually works, and that matters most for the queer Russians it was built to silence.

The law, in 30 seconds

  • 2013: Russia bans “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships” to minors.
  • December 2022: the ban is extended to people of all ages.
  • November 2023: the Supreme Court declares the “international LGBT public movement”, a movement that doesn’t formally exist, an “extremist organization”, Meduza notes.

Since then the rainbow flag counts as an “extremist symbol”. According to Mediazona, which cites the rights group OVD-Info, at least 32 people across 14 regions now face criminal charges for “LGBT extremism”, and administrative cases for “propaganda” or “extremist symbols” run into the hundreds.

The cases

All of these come from Mediazona’s report:

  • Vera Makeeva, a pensioner in Kurgan, was fined 1,500 rubles over old reposts of homophobic material that included a rainbow flag. “It’s my own fault,” she told Mediazona. In Meduza’s translation, she added that she hadn’t cleaned up her photo albums in 13 years.
  • Pyotr Voronin in Pyatigorsk spent one day in jail over an image showing a swastika and a rainbow flag that he says was meant to mock Ukraine and France. His verdict on the process: “The FSB’s AI decided I was spreading propaganda.”
  • Vladimir Sugakov, a pensioner in the Kuzbass, was fined 100,000 rubles for a slideshow of Pride photos he says was meant as criticism. “The court didn’t bother to figure it out and fined me,” he said.
  • Georgy Rezankov, a 21-year-old history teacher in Veliky Novgorod, was fined 1,500 rubles for images showing the rainbow flag.
  • A Moscow resident was fined 100,000 rubles over a homophobic video the court classed as “LGBT propaganda”.
  • Father Grigory (Grzegorz Zwoliński), a Polish Catholic priest in Kirov, had criticised Archbishop Paolo Pezzi for supporting LGBTQ+ people. He put a rainbow flag next to a photo of Pezzi in a post, and was fined 1,000 rubles. Then his residence permit was annulled and he was given a 50-year ban on entering Russia, after 24 years in the country.

A few cases went the other way. A court closed a case against a Yamal radio host after noting his images were “placed precisely in a negative light”, and an investigation in Kurgan over an image of Putin against a rainbow was dropped for lack of intent. That inconsistency is part of the story too.

Why this isn’t actually funny

Mediazona puts it plainly: authorities are “regularly charging the authors of overtly homophobic statements under laws meant to suppress the LGBTQ+ community.”

Read that again with queer Russians in mind. If a court won’t look at why a rainbow appears in a post that is openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people, it certainly isn’t weighing context when the post belongs to a trans woman, a gay couple or a teenager figuring things out. The law is designed to work on symbols, not on meaning. That makes it fast, cheap and impossible to predict, which is exactly what makes people self-censor.

The pressure on the community itself keeps rising. Human Rights Watch reported in May that courts banned nine LGBT groups in seven regions between March and May 2026. Taking part in a banned group can bring up to 6 years in prison, leading one up to 12, and repeated displays of “extremist” symbols up to 4. HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director, Hugh Williamson, called the bans “absurd, harmful, and discriminatory.”

We’ve covered where this road leads before: a Moscow candidate jailed for 10 days over a rainbow “LOVE” T-shirt, and Russia’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group, the Russian LGBT Network, shutting down after a “terrorist” designation.

The bigger picture

There’s a lesson here that travels well beyond Russia. Laws that ban “propaganda” or “symbols” always pitch themselves as narrow: protecting children, protecting values. In practice they hand police and courts a blunt tool, and blunt tools hit everyone within reach. A pensioner’s forgotten reposts. A priest’s angry post. A teacher’s memes.

And at the centre of it, still, the people the law was aimed at: queer Russians who now have to wonder whether a rainbow in an old photo album could cost them a fine, or far more.

If you’re in Russia, the guidance in the panel above is practical, not alarmist: old posts count, and context won’t save you. If you’re outside, the most useful thing you can do is keep paying attention, and keep supporting the independent journalists still documenting this from exile.