Banks are now obliged to freeze funds and suspend services to persons and groups associated with the grouping, which critics say is hard to define

Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) has expanded its designation of persons and organizations deemed to be involved in extremist activities or terrorism to include “the international LGBT social movement and its structural units.” The updated list can be found on the agency’s website.

The move follows a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court last November that upheld the Ministry of Justice’s recognition of the “international LGBT movement” as extremist. Judges also recognized its structural divisions as fitting the same description and banned them; a move that representatives of the gay community said they feared would lead to a clampdown. 

Earlier this week, a court ordered the arrest of an administrator and the art director of a gay bar in the city of Orenburg, after they were charged with violating a ban on LGBTQ ‘propaganda’. 

According to the law, banks are required to freeze the funds of persons included on the list and suspend services to them. However, critics have argued that there is no specific international LGBT moment and that for that reason the wording is difficult to interpret. 

Rosfinmonitoring’s list includes more than 14,000 people and entities designated as extremists and terrorists. They range from Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban to Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and the movement of late Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

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