Rescuing independent LGBT Russian language media

On February 8, our website was blocked throughout the Russian Federation. As a result of the ban, we’ve lost about half of our visitors. Now, instead of 5 million, the website is visited by about 2.5 million people.

The website has been recognised as a foreign agent for the second time. Our organization, named Phoenix PLUS, was first recognized as a “foreign agent” at the end of 2020. On March 23, 2023, the Ministry of Justice of Russia entered the Parni PLUS website into the register of “foreign agents” for the second time.

We see all the sanctions imposed on us as an indicator of our work.

Our current publishing priorities are:

• Anti-war movement support
• Psychological health of LGBT people
• Supporting LGBT action groups and initiatives that operate in Russia
• Legal information for LGBT people
• Covering the situation with the adoption of new legislation on propaganda
• Denouncing hate speeches from politicians and propagandists

However, we were ready for the ban, and thanks to our technical specialist, we’ve learned how to bypass the blocking. Now, people can still visit our website in Russia even without a VPN

We are also developing our Telegram channel, which already has 13,000 subscribers.

Thanks to your support, we continue our work, day by day. 

We keep on working. Thanks to your support, our news specialist continues to work. Over the period, we have posted 154 publications on the site. As of the time of this report, the site's publications have been viewed by  865,000 unique visitors.

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After the beginning of the hot phase of the war (February 24), all independent media were blocked in Russia. By some coincidence, despite the active anti-war agenda, we have not been blocked, but we are going to be the first after the final approval of the law against LGBT propaganda.

Organizations working with LGBTQ+ people are under constant pressure, a great deal of LGBTQ+ activists emigrated at the beginning of the active phase of the war with Ukraine and their organizations closed down. The funding for still operating organizations is constantly decreasing, because, among other things, LGBTQ+ people are afraid to support organizations recognized as foreign agents. As a result, information and support programs for LGBTQ+ people are disastrously curtailed.

In the context of the shrinking information space for the real social agenda and, in particular, LGBTQ+ issues, we consider it important to continue developing our media resource, which is an essential part of community systems.

Since the beginning of the war, our traffic has been constantly growing, which is due to the fact that most independent media either stop their work or write less about LGBT people. Today, we are the most visited LGBT media resource in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. More than 350 thousand unique users read us every month.

However, we keep on working. Thanks to your support, our news specialist continues to work. Over the period, we have posted 85 publications on the site, 32 features and 53 news pieces. As of the time of this report, the site's publications have been viewed by 694,000 unique visitors.

Thank you very much for your support of our work.