russia

Discriminatory anti-LGBTQIA+ laws have been in force in Russia for more than a decade. We publish research and data revealing the harmful consequences of these laws. The goal is to gather evidence necessary for future legal reform and condemnation of the Russian discriminatory state policies.

We identified more than 1,200 hate crimes against LGBTQIA+ people in Russia by analysing court decisions. We extracted the texts of court rulings from several sources and queried keyword in them to identify cases related to hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In the databse, we registered the types of crimes, the number of victims and fatalities, and whether crimes were committed by organised groups.

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.