Case Summary and Outcome

The Third Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found violations of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private life) in a case against Russia concerning homophobic hate speech directed at LGBTI activists. The Court analyzed in this case two different applications regarding similar issues. In the first application, the Court determined that Russian authorities failed to adequately respond to openly homophobic verbal assaults and physical threats made by politician Milonov against LGBTI participants at a 2015 rally—where he called them “perverts,” “scumbags,” “AIDS-ridden,” threatened violence, and directly targeted specific individuals. The Court ruled that domestic authorities at every level—criminal, administrative, and civil—provided inadequate reasoning and failed to properly balance competing Convention rights, focusing exclusively on protecting Milonov’s freedom of expression while disregarding the applicants’ rights and the negative stereotyping. In the second application, regarding a 2020 video depicting a mock “gay hunt,” the Court found the complaint inadmissible. The ECtHR concluded that the video, viewed in context, was “provocative political satire” intended to inspire public debate on proposed constitutional amendments, rather than propagate hate, and thus did not reach the threshold of severity required to affect the private lives of individual LGBTI community members.

---

Facts

The case concerns two applications against Russia regarding discrimination and hate speech against LGBTI individuals. 

In the first application, the applicants were LGBTI activists who participated in a rally against hatred in St. Petersburg on May 1, 2015, carrying rainbow flags and LGBTI-themed banners.  During this rally, Milonov, a politician and member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, shouted numerous vulgar insults and threats at the LGBTI participants—calling them “perverts,” “scumbags,” “AIDS-ridden,” and claiming they were pedophiles. He also threatened violence and suggested they should be “liquidated,” thrown into the river, crushed with tanks, and jailed.  Some threats were directed specifically at LGBTI individuals, such as applicants Grachev and Miniakhmetov, which included:

“Who is it? Catch this punk. You, outcast faggot. I will find you, I will find you, got it? He has got the flag. Why don’t you arrest him? Arrest this punk, arrest this faggot!”.  (Addressed at Grachev)

“Faggot! Absolute faggot. Faggot, faggot, faggot, get out of here. I will give you a holed spoon.” (Addressed at Miniakhmetov) [para. 6]

On May 27, 2015, the applicants filed criminal complaints against  Milonov, contending that his statements constituted public appeals to extremist activities, calls for violence, incitement to hatred, and defamation. However, the St. Petersburg Investigative Committee refused to register their complaints, stating that Milonov had merely expressed his personal opinion about the LGBTI community. The applicants’ subsequent requests for judicial review were rejected by the Smolninskiy District Court and later by the St. Petersburg City Court, which upheld the finding that Milonov was merely expressing personal opinions. 

Later, on May 26, 2015, the applicants filed an administrative offense complaint under articles 5.61 § 2,5.62, and 20.1 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offences [CAO], alleging disorderly conduct, public insults, and discrimination. A Deputy Prosecutor rejected this complaint, claiming it was impossible to establish who had been insulted since Milonov had not specifically named individuals. At the same time, they filed a civil claim under articles 150, 151, and 152 of Russia’s Civil Code, arguing that Milonov’s statements violated their rights to honor, dignity, respect for private life, and non-discrimination. 

Despite a court-appointed expert finding that Milonov’s statements were insulting and targeted specific persons, the Kirovskiy District Court dismissed the claim, concluding that the applicants could not have heard the statements due to the music and that Milonov had expressed his personal opinion about the LGBTI community rather than specific individuals. The applicants appealed this judgment but it was upheld by the St. Petersburg City Court on September 20, 2016, which found it lawful and justified. Their subsequent cassation appeals before the St. Petersburg City Court and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation were dismissed in February and June 2017 respectively.

In the second application, the applicant, Petrov, was an openly gay man who served as the executive director of an LGBTI organization. In June 2020, a video was published on social media depicting a mock “gay hunt” set in the year 2035, showing a father and son hunting gay men in a forest with rifles. The dialogue between the father and son in the video was as follows:

“Father: The gay hunting season opened today. My son and I came here to, how do you say, thin out the population. Right, son? (laughs)

Son: I killed my first gay at the age of sixteen.

Father: The winter this year was warm, plenty of food. The gays must be fat, lardy, you know. My son and I have been hunting gays for a long time.

Son: My father has been taking me along since gay hunting was authorised in 2020.

Father (luring): Faggot, faggot, faggot, faggot, faggot, faggot, faggot … Your turn, son (unintelligible)

Son: Starbucks, Starbucks …

Father: Here he is, the faggot.

Son: Ah!

The hunters fired their rifles in the direction of a running man in colourful clothes.

Son: Mum will make fruit tart.” [para. 22]

The video ended with the hunters posing next to a dead gay man, with text encouraging viewers to vote for constitutional amendments that would authorize “hunting homosexuals.” The video was viewed 120,000 times and received comments supporting violence against gay people. 

On June 19, 2020, Petrov filed a criminal complaint under Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, alleging that the video contained calls for violence against gay people by dehumanizing them and portraying them as prey. The police commissioned a linguistic expert examination, which, on October 7, 2020, found that the video included negative statements about homosexual people, such as the use of the offensive term “faggot.” However, the expert concluded that the video did not advocate hostile actions or promote ideas of superiority or inferiority based on sexual orientation. On January 11, 2021, the police’s anti-extremism unit refused to open a criminal case, stating that there was no corpus delicti and that the complaint should be handled as an administrative offense. The applicant challenged this decision in court. On December 1, 2021, the Zelenogradskiy District Court upheld the police’s refusal, affirming its legality and reasoning. The applicant appealed; yet, the Moscow City Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.

Simultaneously, on June 19, 2020, the applicant filed an administrative complaint under Article 20.3.1 of the CAO before the Prosecutor General, reiterating the argument that the video was extremist and requesting its restriction under Section 15.3 of the Information Act. The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office questioned D.K., one of the video’s creators, who explained that the video was a direct parody of a video  that advocated for Constitutional amendments to deny marriage equality to LGBTI persons and was posted on a pro-government website called FAN. He argued the video parody exaggerated homophobia to an absurd level, making it impossible to interpret literally. On May 24, 2021, the Moscow prosecutor refused to initiate administrative proceedings, citing the linguistic expert’s findings that the video did not contain an identifiable object of an offense.

In both cases, applications were lodged before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The plaintiffs in both applications claimed they were discriminated against and that domestic authorities failed to respond adequately.

---

Decision Overview

Justices Ioannis Ktistakis, Peeter Roosma, Lətif Hüseynov, Andreas Zünd, Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, Diana Kovatcheva, and Mateja Đurović unanimously delivered the decision for the Third Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The main issues the Court analyzed were:

1. Whether Russian authorities, in the first application, fulfilled their positive obligation—under articles 8 (private life) and 14 (non-discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)—to effectively respond to openly homophobic verbal assaults and physical threats made by politician Milonov against LGBTI activists at a 2015 rally.
2. Whether a satirical video depicting a mock “gay hunt” in the year 2035 (second application), created in the context of a constitutional amendment campaign, reached the threshold of severity required to affect the private lives of individual LGBTI community members, thereby triggering state obligations under articles 8 and 14 of the ECHR.

On the First Application 

The Court noted that in cases of harassment motivated by homophobia, State authorities have a positive obligation under articles 8 and 14 of the Convention to respond effectively, particularly in favor of vulnerable minorities. Upon balancing the applicants’ right to respect for private life against the public interest in protecting freedom of expression, the Court emphasized that no hierarchical relationship exists between these rights, and significant weight must be given to whether domestic authorities properly identified and balanced these conflicting rights.

In the present case, the Court observed that Russian law contains both civil and criminal provisions to protect people against homophobic statements. Nonetheless, it expressed doubts about their effectiveness in practice, noting the Government’s failure to demonstrate settled domestic practice. The ECtHR considered that domestic authorities failed to properly investigate the applicants’ criminal complaints, providing only a summary reasoning that Milonov had merely expressed his personal opinion about the LGBTI community. For the Court, domestic authorities did not recognize the conflict between competing Convention rights or conduct any balancing exercise; on the contrary, they focused exclusively on protecting Milonov’s freedom of expression while disregarding the applicants’ rights and the homophobic stereotyping behind the incident. 

On the topic of the administrative complaint, the Court observed it was rejected through an inadequate reasoning—primarily because Milonov’s statements were directed at a group rather than at named individuals. The ECtHR rejected this reasoning, arguing that the applicants were directly targeted as rally participants and that some statements were specifically addressed to Mr. Grachev and Mr. Miniakhmetov. By effectively denying the applicants’ standing to complain, authorities never examined the core of their complaint regarding the violation of their rights to respect for private life and protection from discrimination.

About the civil proceedings, the Court held that domestic courts also failed to examine the case in light of Convention principles, incorrectly determining that the applicants were not personally affected because they could not hear the statements directly due to the loud music and because Milonov did not know them personally. The ECtHR dismissed these arguments, noting that the applicants learned about the statements later from video recordings and became affected at that point. Moreover, to the Court, prior acquaintance is irrelevant to deciding whether individuals were directly targeted by verbal assaults.

The ECtHR also rejected the civil courts’ argument that the contested statements could be construed neutrally, emphasizing that Milonov’s remarks were “openly homophobic and particularly aggressive and hostile in tone.” [para. 75] In conclusion, the Court determined that domestic authorities failed to comply with their positive obligation to respond adequately to verbal assaults and physical threats motivated by homophobia. It held that failure to address such incidents can normalize hostility towards LGBTI individuals and perpetuate discrimination. Therefore, the Court found that Russia violated Article 14 of the ECHR taken in conjunction with Article 8 of the same instrument. Thus, it ordered the State to pay each of the applicants EUR 7,500 for non-pecuniary damages

On the Second Application

The ECtHR began by assessing whether the applicant, who complained about a video with alleged negative stereotypes of the LGBTI community, could be considered a victim under Article 34 of the Convention despite not being personally targeted.  The Court acknowledged that negative stereotypes about a group can affect its members’ sense of identity and self-worth, potentially impacting their private lives even when not directly targeted by the contested statements. Considering this, it outlined several factors for determining when public statements can affect “private life” under Article 8—including the characteristics of the group, the content of the statements, and the context in which they were made. 

The Court recognized that the Russian LGBTI community can be considered “a particularly vulnerable group needing heightened protection from stigmatizing statements” [para. 53] due to its historical marginalization. It also noted that the video reached a wide audience as it was created by a well-known actor and television presenter. However, the ECtHR was not convinced that the video depicted negative stereotypes of LGBTI people reaching the level of seriousness required to affect the private life of individual members of that group.

Upon examining the video’s content and context, the Court determined it was clearly a piece of political satire published shortly before a national vote on constitutional amendments and that it parodied another pro-amendment video. Both videos were set in 2035, featured scenes involving gay men, and asked “Is this the Russia you choose?” followed by calls to vote on the amendments. [para. 55] The Court concluded that taken as a whole, the contested video could not reasonably be viewed as propagating discrimination but rather sought “to mock the homophobic message of FAN’s video by exaggerating it to an absurd extent,” and to warn that accepting homophobic attitudes could normalize social violence against the LGBTI community. [para. 56] 

The Court emphasized that in election campaigns, “a certain vivacity of comment may be tolerated more than in other circumstances” and that protection under Article 10 (freedom of expression) applies to satire as a form of artistic expression and social commentary that “naturally aims to provoke and agitate.” [para. 57] On this point, it noted that satirical expressions regarding topical issues play an important role in open discussions on matters of public concern—essential within a democratic society. The ECtHR further observed that while the applicant’s perception of the video as offensive was understandable, such sentiments alone “cannot set the limits of freedom of expression.” [para. 58]

Having analyzed all relevant factors, the Court concluded that the video was a piece of political satire, on a matter of public interest, that did not reach the “threshold of severity” required to affect the “private life” of individual LGBTI community members. Consequently, the applicant could not be considered a victim of alleged violations of articles 8 and 14 of the ECHR. Hence, the applicant’s complaint was deemed inadmissible by the Court. 

---