Russian photographer sentenced to compulsory labour over LGBT fanfiction

A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg has sentenced a local photographer to 18 months of compulsory labour on charges of producing illegal pornography, state-affiliated tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda-Yekaterinburg reports.

The criminal case was launched nearly a year ago after a woman reported to law enforcement that she had found fanfiction published by photographer Alexandra Kuzyk in 2022 on her underage daughter’s device that depicted same-sex relationships.

The LGBT health website Parni+ later determined that the prosecution had been triggered specifically by a gay fanfiction story based on the South Korean boy band Stray Kids, which Kuzyk had posted online.

Prosecutors had sought a four-year prison sentence. Kuzyk fully admitted guilt and told the court that writing fanfiction had long been a hobby of hers. The court sentenced her to 18 months of compulsory labour, with 10% of her earnings to be withheld by the state.

Following Russia’s 2022 expansion of its ban on LGBT “propaganda”, authorities began blocking websites hosting amateur fiction. In 2025, MangaLIB, the largest Russian-language manga platform, was fined 14 million rubles (€160,000) for “LGBT propaganda”, with one of its managers fined an additional 1.2 million rubles (€13,700).