Authorities have charged executives at some of the country’s top streaming services with violating Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ “propaganda” laws.

According to The Moscow Times, independent Russian-language news outlet Mediazona first reported on the charges against streamers, including Kinopoisk, Wink, Ivi, Amediteka, 24TV, Digital Television, and Beeline TV, earlier this week.

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Public records reportedly did not specify the content on the platforms that allegedly violates the law. But as The Moscow Times notes, at least one executive, Digital Television program director Alexei Bernat, has been charged with “subjecting” minors to “LGBTQ+ propaganda.”

Bernat is one of only two executives among those charged this week who have not previously been fined for promoting “non-traditional” relationships and lifestyles. Several have been fined multiple times in recent years for allegedly distributing LGBTQ+ “propaganda.”

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Under Russian law, so-called LGBTQ+ “propaganda” has been banned in the presence of minors since 2013. In late 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation expanding the 2013 law to effectively outlaw any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in the country. And in 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court declared the “international LGBT social movement” an “extremist organization.”

The charges against Russian streaming platforms coincide with what out Russian-born journalist Mikhail Zygar describes as the “extraordinary success” of Canadian gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry in the country. In a recent piece for Vanity Fair, Zygar reported that the series has an 8.6 rating on Russia’s equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes — a higher rating than both Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, the platform’s two most-watched shows.

At the same time, Zygar notes, the series about a secret affair between closeted professional hockey players — one of whom is Russian — is not available to stream on any Russian platform. But, he claims, “I know that thousands of gay men in Russia watched Heated Rivalry — on pirate sites, of course, because they have no legal way to watch the series.”

Zygar cites a 2021 survey that found that despite Putin’s draconian crackdown on the country’s LGBTQ+ community, 55 percent of Russians under 25 — what Zygar describes as the Ilya Rozanov generation — support equal rights for LGBTQ+ people and even same-sex marriage.

Zygar also speculates that the show’s popularity among LGBTQ+ people in Russia — and their willingness “to break every possible law” just to see it — is likely due to the fact that many relate to Connor Storrie’s Ilya Rozanov. “I know Ilya Rozanov,” Zygar writes. “In fact, I know quite a few people like him. I might even say that I have been him.”

“Ilya does not look like an alien or a caricatured Russian gangster in a fur ushanka — the kind of Russian you commonly find in Hollywood films. He is simply a human being—traumatized by a difficult childhood,” Zygar writes. “There are no exotic balalaikas, no mysterious Russian soul, no Putin, no Dostoevsky—just an ordinary person, alive and vulnerable.”

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