Public Organization and LGBT Initiative Irida Declared “Extremist”

Public organization and LGBT initiative Irida has been declared “extremist”

The Samara-based public organization Irida, which supports LGBT people, has been declared “extremist” and banned from operating in Russia. This is already the third such ruling in the past three days: Russian courts continue to classify LGBT initiatives en masse as “extremist,” writes First Department.

Irida is a small group of activists who ran a VKontakte page, put together a mini-library of books on LGBT topics, and sent appeals to law enforcement agencies and State Duma deputies. The organization’s former head, Artem Fokin, became the first LGBT activist convicted in a case over “organizing the activities of an extremist organization” on March 6, 2026.

The key piece of evidence was a “criminological profile.” The prosecution deemed Irida’s appeals to deputies a sign of extremism — for example, because they criticized the law on “LGBT propaganda,” which one text described as “absurd and unfounded.”

The authors of the profile concluded that such texts “reflect protest against the moral and spiritual values of Russian society, its legal system and legislation,” and also that these materials “contain calls to support ideas aimed at destroying fundamental Russian spiritual and moral values and undermining the national security of the Russian Federation.”

🔵In addition to Irida, the LGBTQ group Coming Out, the LGBT Resource Center in Yekaterinburg, the Parni Plus association, and the Moscow Community Center for LGBT initiatives have already been recognized as “extremist.” Cases against the Russian LGBT Network, Center T, the Yaroslavl movement Callisto, and the T9NSK initiative are still being heard in court.

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