Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has fired Moscow’s mayor, Yury Luzhkov, who banned Pride parades and labelled the events “satanic.”
Yury Luzhkov (photo by A Savin)
The New York Times reports that Medvedev sacked Luzhkov in the wake of an escalating feud. While the mayor “endured sustained criticism for reigning like an autocrat, muzzling dissent and allowing blatant corruption to flourish,” it seems that Luzhkov’s criticism of the Russian president was the final straw.
Moscow Pride organizer Nikolai Alexeyev, who was recently kidnapped and pressured to withdraw a complaint against Luzhkov at the European Court of Human Rights, says he has no plans to drop the case.
“My only regret is that he will not be around to face
the music over Strasbourg,” Alexeyev told the Moscow News. “I hope that the new mayor will be a more European
mayor and will understand that Moscow has to become a real European
city and will have to accept the features of a European city, because
Luzhkov really broke his teeth on the issue of international parades
and he broke Moscow’s international reputation on this issue.”
And the question remains: will Luzhkov’s successor be any more gay-friendly?
Read more:
- Rally to support Russian queers
- Nikolai Alexeyev “kidnapped”; did not escape to Belarus
- The new Russian queer activism
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