Russian police beat LGBT partygoers at nightclub

RUSSIAN police have raided a party where they said LGBT propaganda was being spread and beat attendees in the snow as part of a national crackdown.

The Typography club in the city of Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow, was holding a night it described as promoting “love, openness and sexuality”.

Though not overtly advertised as a gay night, authorities interpreted it that way and rushed to shut it down.

In a video posted by Russian media, a man wearing a mask and plain clothes kicks and punches a partygoer lying in the snow outside the club.

Another man wearing a military uniform and helmet stands by watching.

OVD-INFO, a Russian rights organisation, said that the video was filmed on Saturday night outside Typography, a cultural centre.

“The security forces forced the party participants to lie on the floor. Those present were photographed, beaten, and threatened with being forced into the war in Ukraine,” it said.

OVD-INFO also said that police then picked out nine of the “most feminine-looking” men to drive to a police station and charge with spreading LGBT propaganda. Russia’s opposition media quoted a partygoer as saying that he believes he would have been even more badly beaten if he had not known the words to the official Tula region anthem that officers forced him to sing.

“They grabbed me by the hair and asked who I was,” said the unnamed party-goer. “‘This is a Hero City! Sing the anthem!’ Thank God, I know the Tula anthem because I grew up here.”

The Kremlin has effectively outlawed homosexuality, framing gay rights as a feature of decadent Western culture. Police have raided nightclubs and bars in Moscow and St Petersburg because they consider them to be hotbeds of anti-war sentiment.

Videos from these raids have previously shown young hipsters and rock fans being forced to sing the Russian national anthem as uniformed policemen look on and casually tap their truncheons.

Vladimir Putin has made promoting Russia as a bastion of traditional values central to his image. Over Christmas, Russian authorities imposed major fines on celebrities who had attended what Putin considered to be an excessively lurid and louche “nearly naked” party at a Moscow nightclub.