The ink was barely dry on Russia’s decision to outlaw what it called the “international LGBT public movement” as extremist when masked police raided a bar in central Moscow where Vasili gathered with his friends on Friday nights for an LGBTQ+ party.

But in big cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg, gay Russians and their allies still found ways to express themselves despite existing laws, with a vibrant LGBTQ+ party scene blossoming, one to which authorities largely closed their eyes.

The Kremlin is directly linking the crackdown on LGBTQ+ expression with its justification for the war, said Shainyan, telling its citizens that Russia was not only fighting Ukraine, but was involved in a broader, existential battle against western liberal values it often describes as “satanic”.

Last year, Putin signed a law that banned “LGBT propaganda” among adults, a bill that criminalised any act regarded as an attempt to promote what Russia calls “non-traditional sexual relations” – in film, online, in advertising or in public.

Before the war in Ukraine, Marvin challenged the gender norms of the Putin regime and the Russian state’s homophobic attitude through a series of daring public performances, which have been recorded in the critically acclaimed documentary Queendom.

Harlem, who changed his name after his arrival in the Netherlands because of safety concerns, was speaking to the Guardian at the funeral in Amsterdam of Mikhail Zubchenko, a 24-year-old queer Russian who killed himself while waiting for his asylum application in a Dutch refugee camp.

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