Just days after a court in Russia designated a prominent LGBTQ+ rights organization as “extremist” in a secret trial, the head of a second advocacy group was targeted on charges of “extremism” under the same 2023 Supreme Court ruling that outlaws the so-called “international LGBT movement.”

The ruling added the amorphous “movement” to a list of terrorist and banned organizations in the country.

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Artyom Fokin, director of the Russian grassroots group Irida, was found guilty by a court in the southwestern Samara region of both organizing the activities of an “extremist” organization and evading “foreign agent” duties, and fined 450,000 rubles ($5,700), the Samarskaya Gazeta reported.

Russia’s Justice Ministry forwarded the case to local prosecutors in November, asking the court to label Irida — translated as “Rainbow” in English — an “extremist” organization.

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There were conflicting accounts over when Fokin founded the group. Prosecutors accused Fokin of creating Irida after the Supreme Court ruling, while the Justice Ministry labeled Irida a “foreign agent” organization in 2022. The Moscow Times reported Fokin was added to Russia’s database of “extremists and terrorists” in 2024, when he was arrested following a police complaint by a notorious anti-gay crusader.

In the case decided Friday, prosecutors said among the 38 members in the group, Fokin had “openly invited teens as young as 14 into the organization online.”

A lawyer for Russian human rights group Perviy Otdel said Fokin’s example was the “first extremism case against the leader of an LGBT initiative.” 

“It is undoubtedly part of a new campaign by the state to ban and criminalize the activities of those LGBT initiatives that it has previously included in the register of ‘foreign agents’,” Maxim Olenichev said in a message on Telegram.

Earlier in the week, the St. Petersburg City Court barred the advocacy group Coming Out from operating in the country under the “international LGBT movement” ban, the first such documented case. The judgment was based on a lawsuit filed in February by the Justice Ministry, which was classified as secret. The court declined to release any details of the ruling.

Putin’s anti-LGBTQ+ crusade first gained momentum in 2013 with his national ban on sharing “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” with minors. That prohibition effectively criminalized Pride parades and any public displays of affection by gay people in Russia.

In 2022, the Duma expanded the propaganda ban to include all ages, criminalizing “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books, or advertising.”

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