Julia Ioffe of The New Republic profiles eight LGBT Russians who are enduring Russia’s anti-LGBT crackdown and fighting back.

Here’s an excerpt from the story: 

In May, a group of young men in Volgograd was sitting around drinking beer. “In the course of the conversation, it became clear that their 23-year-old friend was a homosexual, which enraged the rest of the group,” according to a news report. At first, they started to beat him. Then they stripped him and began shoving beer bottles into his anus. Two bottles fit, whole, and a third made it part of the way in. By this point, he was unconscious, so his friends put some cardboard under him and tried to set it alight. They failed, and left, but it dawned on them that he might turn them in. “One of the young men took a boulder weighing about 20 kilos and threw it eight times onto the head of the victim.”

The man’s mourning friends posted testimonials online. One wrote, “He had no signs of homosexuality.

Click here to read the article in full.