It was called a “game”. The grisly, Saw-inspired website that led to the brutal killing of journalist and activist 41-year-old Yelena Grigorieva near her home in Saint Petersburg last Saturday (July 20) had been used to identify gay people, upload their photos and personal information to a database, urging visitors of the site to “hunt” them down and torture them. While the website has since been blocked by Russian authorities, and a suspect has been arrested, there has been no direct evidence to correlate Grigorieva’s killing to the homophobic group.

While it is likely that the event is related to anti-LGBTQ activity in Russia – it was only a few months ago that gay and bisexual men were being detained, starved and beaten in Chechnya – police are treating the matter as an instance of domestic violence, not as a hate crime. Below, we attempt to unpack what happened, what activists are saying, and how Russian authorities are responding.

WHO IS YELENA GRIGORIEVA?

Yelena Grigorieva was a 41-year-old journalist and activist based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, whose protests ranged from domestic violence and prisoner rights to Russian aggression in Ukraine and more recently, LGBTQ+ rights. In January this year, she came out as bisexual and was last seen on Saturday evening with her girlfriend and four men, drinking spirits on a bench near her home.

WHAT HAPPENED

Grigorieva was found dead with eight stab wounds and signs of strangulation near her home in central Saint Petersburg, as reported by Russian newspaper Fontanka. She had posted about receiving death threats on Facebook two days before she was found dead. Two months ago, Grigorieva was attacked at the entrance to her home and told that LGBTQ+ people have “no right to live”, while in early July, her name was listed on an assasination list by a Russian group called Saw (after the horror film franchise of the same name), whose website – that was live until last week – offered cash rewards to those prepared to harm and kill LGBTQ+ people.

According to the Independent, Grigorieva reported these threats to the police, even asking her friend Alexander Mironov to look after her cat if anything happened to her. The Moscow Times reported that one suspect has been arrested in relation to Grigorieva’s death.