# Russian police raid Eksmo publisher offices over alleged LGBTQ+ material
Russian law enforcement has searched the offices of Eksmo, the country’s largest book publisher, and detained several employees in a case centered on alleged LGBTQ+ “propaganda” and “extremism.”
According to *The Moscow Times*, Russian media and rights groups reported that police targeted the publishing house in a Thursday operation and arrested a number of staff members. State-run TASS said 11 employees were detained on Wednesday, while a lawyer quoted by the paper said three had been charged with distributing “LGBT propaganda” and engaging in “extremist” activity.
The case fits into a broader crackdown on LGBTQ+ expression in Russia. The country’s Supreme Court declared the so-called “international LGBT public movement” an extremist organization in 2023, despite the fact that no such formal entity exists. That ruling has since been used to justify pressure on writers, publishers and other cultural institutions.
The reporting said the arrested workers included senior managers and staff from shipping and accounting departments. It also noted that at least two of those detained were no longer employed by Eksmo when they were arrested, according to rights groups and BBC Russia.
Eksmo said it was cooperating with investigators. TASS later reported that the publisher’s head of distribution was released after questioning.
The investigation appears to go beyond a single title. *The Moscow Times* said Eksmo sent business partners a list of 50 books flagged by authorities for violating Russia’s anti-“LGBT propaganda” laws. Among them was the 2021 novel “Summer in a Pioneer Tie,” originally published by Popcorn Books, a company in which Eksmo took a majority stake in 2023.
That detail matters because it suggests the case could affect publishing supply chains, not just a handful of editors or managers. If distributors, accountants and senior staff can be drawn into criminal cases for content decisions, the pressure reaches deep into the Russian book trade.
The publication also placed the raid in the context of earlier action against Popcorn Books, which it said was the first publisher targeted under Russia’s expanded anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The message to the industry is unambiguous: the state is not only policing speech, it is testing the boundaries of who in the commercial chain can be held responsible for it.
For now, the investigation remains under way, and the public record in this report is still limited to what Russian media, rights groups and the publisher itself have said. But the scale of the search and the breadth of the allegations indicate that the case could become one of the most consequential publishing crackdowns in Russia this year.
