Russian Activist Added to Extremist Registry Over LGBT Meme

The Russian state financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring, has added activist Yegor Tkachenko to the national registry of terrorists and extremists. Tkachenko is the deputy head of the youth wing of the opposition Yabloko party in Yekaterinburg (a city in the Ural region).

Typically, this registry includes people facing criminal charges for extremism or terrorism. Being added to the list means all of a person’s bank accounts in Russia are blocked. However, according to Tkachenko, he is unaware of any criminal cases officially opened against him.

In May 2025, police accused Tkachenko of “LGBT propaganda” after he sent a sticker featuring imagery from the Gachimuchi internet subculture (memes often using images of actors from vintage gay porn) to a local chat. The messages were discovered following a denunciation by a pro-government activist, which led police to raid an event where people were writing letters to political prisoners.

Later, in April 2026, the activist’s home was searched. According to Tkachenko, security forces offered him a deal to become an informant within the Yabloko party and threatened him with two criminal charges: one for a post defending the imprisoned sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky (justification of terrorism), and another for linking to a friend’s channel (calls for extremism).

The inclusion in the Rosfinmonitoring registry continues a trend of pressure on activists and opposition figures in Russia, where laws on extremism and “LGBT propaganda” are increasingly used to prosecute those who disagree with state policies.