As Meduza reported earlier, police in St. Petersburg detained several LGBT rights activists during the city's May Day parade last weekend. (The activists had unfurled rainbow flags during a march.) The newspaper Novaya Gazeta has now learned new details about this incident.

City officials barred LGBT rights activists from holding their own march on May 1, so they participated in a sanctioned May Day parade, joining the “green bloc” column for independent trade unions, which also welcomed animal rights activists, vegetarians, and proponents of city-beautification efforts. The “green bloc” reportedly asked the gay rights activists to refrain from displaying rainbow symbols, citing “security concerns.”

Several LGBT rights activists brought rainbow flags nonetheless, deciding to defy the ban. “Greens” marching alongside these activists asked them to lower the flags, but they refused. And then a fight broke out.

Dmitry Veganov, a representative of the vegan V-Club society, snatched a flag from the hands of one LGBT rights activist and snapped it over his knee. Hearing the noise, police officers ran over and dragged away four gay rights activists to a patrol wagon. (According to Novaya Gazeta, the representatives of the “green bloc” are unrepentant about what happened.)

“A rainbowed May 1, 2016” NevexTV

Previously, the news website Fontanka reported that St. Petersburg city councilman Vitaly Milonov, the infamous author of Russia's first law against so-called “gay propaganda,” also attended the May Day parade, but turned his antagonism toward pro-Ukrainian activists, when he couldn't find any LGBT rights advocates. (Milonov also grabbed and broke a demonstrator's flag: a Ukrainian flag.)

“The anti-gay crusader's unfulfilled wish to encounter an activist from the LGBT community manifested in a desperate cry: ‘Lesbo!’ Milonov yelled, at whom it was not clear to this Fontanka correspondent, but people started shoving almost immediately afterwards.”

Photo on front page: Alexander Chizhenok / TASS