In April 2026, a St. Petersburg court labelled the organisation as extremist in a hearing held behind closed doors. Under Russia's criminal code, the designation may mean that anybody associated with the group would risk "years behind bars" for a crime that is "akin to terrorism". This designation follows the Russian Supreme Court's 2023 decision to designate the "international LGBT movement" as extremist as well as 2020 constitutional amendments which defined marriage as between one man and one woman.
In August 2026 the group announced that, because of that "extremist" designation, it would shut down "to avoid creating additional risks for people."
Structure
The network is governed by a conference, which meets at least once a year. Between conferences, the network is managed by a council headed by a chairperson; both are elected by the conference. The network has 14 regional branches:
Saint Petersburg
Petrozavodsk
Pskov
Arkhangelsk
Volgograd
Kazan
Naberezhnye Chelny
Perm
Samara
Tyumen
Omsk
Tomsk
Kemerovo
Novosibirsk
Crimea
Two offices, in Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk, were closed at the beginning of 2010. In addition, the network has 11 LGBT organizations:
Exit LGBT Organization (St. Petersburg)
LesbiPARTYya (St. Petersburg)
Serving Nuntiare et Recreare (LGBT Christians) (St. Petersburg)
On 17 May 2019, the association reported that seven people broke into the apartment of one of its volunteers in Saint Petersburg who was not publicly identified. The unidentified assailants threatened the activist and other staff with physical violence and murder. He was aggressively interrogated and threatened with violence. “We will take you to the police office and will break all your bones,” they were told by one of the attackers. The assailants were allegedly looking for a young Chechen woman who had escaped from the region, as well as the Russian LGBT Network emergency programme coordinator David Isteev. The activist said “They told me to tell David Isteev that they were going to find and kill him,” Three of the assailants were identified as Chechens and four implied they were police officers from Chechnya's capital Grozny, but refused to provide identification documents.
Designation as foreign agent, liquidation
In October 2021, Russian LGBT Network was designated as an unregistered public organization performing the functions of a "foreign agent". An attack campaign against the organization played out on multiple Russian media outlets in November. In February 2022, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit seeking the liquidation of Russian LGBT Network's parent organization Sphere Charitable Foundation, arguing that its operations and activism are contrary to "traditional" values and state policy, and is thus a "threat to public order and the rule of law". Kochetkov criticized the suit as being based on ideology rather than law. On 26 April 2022, a St. Petersburg court ordered the liquidation of Sphere, ruling that the organization had illegally conducted foreign-backed political activity.
