Raids and denunciations targeting swingers and kinky parties have become routine in Russia since December 2023, when TV host Nastya Ivleeva’s “naked party” attracted widespread criticism. Some organizers have gone out of business, while others have turned to tantra and psychotherapy. The few remaining brands now condemn all things LGBTQ+, hoping it can earn them immunity from backlash. Yet many members of the sex-positive scene continue to do what they did before the war — only in secret.
Video version in Russian: YouTube
Police raid footage from a sex-themed party has once again made its way into Russian media — this time from the Moscow swingers’ club Bizarre, where the men were forced to lie face down on the floor, and the women were lined up so they would be clearly visible on camera. In May 2025, security forces stormed the venue on the justification that the action was “part of preventive and screening measures on suspicion of LGBT propaganda.”
In August, a court in Yekaterinburg sentenced Stanislav Slovikovsky, an organizer of erotic parties, to 200 hours of community service. In May 2024, police had raided his private event — Blue Velvet — at a recreation center in Sverdlovsk Region.
Slovikovsky had been holding Blue Velvet erotic parties with BDSM elements in the area since at least 2017. No stranger to scandals, this time the host faced criminal charges for “offending the feelings of believers.”
At a Blue Velvet party
The prosecution built its case on a photo posted on the party’s channel. It captured female models with an X-cross — a well-known BDSM accessory. The judge deemed it a religious symbol. Slovikovsky plans to appeal the verdict. He no longer organizes parties.
“Come on, you’re a man — how can you enjoy that?”
In the summer of 2023, a large Moscow swingers’ club hosted a sex bloggers' festival. The first three days went fine, but on the fourth, trouble began. As Ivan (name changed to protect the speaker’s identity), a frequent guest at sex parties and a practitioner of intimate massage for women told The Insider, the organizers wrote in the event chat that someone had called the riot police.
“I walk out and see cops at the entrance, and the owner is arguing with them. He took them around the festival to show them that nothing illegal was going on — people were selling candles, giving workshops. As for us, we were doing massage, without touching anyone's private parts,” Ivan says. “The cops left, and I thought the swingers must have good connections. But that wasn’t the end of it.”
About half an hour later, an aggressive man showed up at the club — an activist from the nationalist pro-government group Russian Community who happens to be a professional boxer. “One of the rooms had a curtained area reserved for a dominatrix. She had tied up some guy in his underwear to a cross and was whipping him,” Ivan recalls. “That’s where this activist burst in with his phone. He started filming them and yelling at the guy being whipped: ‘You’re a man! Why are you doing this? How can you enjoy it?’ Everyone was stunned — both the submissive and the dominatrix.”
The activist kept making threats. He walked around the club shouting that other members of Russian Community were waiting outside and that unless the participants “stop” within ten minutes, the group would storm the place. “Everyone looked at him like he was insane. Of course, no one actually stormed the club,” Ivan recalls.
About a week after that incident, police in the Moscow Region broke up the annual BDSM Fishing festival in the village of Antsiferovo. The event had been held in the same location for ten years. Acting on a tip from far-right activists, police raided the site on opening day and arrested the organizer “for disobeying law enforcement officers.”
“Swingers in Kotelniki have occupied the Bolshoy Lyuberetsky Quarry for orgies and witch sabbaths”
Members of far-right movements such as Russian Community and Sorok Sorokov have taken an acute interest in the campaign against sex events. Their channels feature denunciatory posts like “Swingers in Kotelniki have occupied the Bolshoy Lyuberetsky Quarry for orgies and witch sabbaths.”
The mention of a “sabbath” is no coincidence. The self-proclaimed moral crusaders seek to leverage Russian laws banning LGBT “propaganda,” satanism, and “offending the religious feelings of believers.”
Infamously, Nastya Ivleeva's 2023 “naked party” faced heavy backlash from the authorities and pro-government media mainly because it had attracted so many high-profile guests (it was an erotic-themed fancy-dress party, after all, rather than an actual sex event). Still, as a result, authentic sex-positive projects began shutting down across the country. In February 2024, the organizers of Kinky Party announced they were ceasing operations: “We received an official warning from the authorities stating that we could no longer hold our events in their traditional format.”
Kinky Party co-founder Tanya Dmitrieva explains that she did not want to put participants at risk: “After the police raids, people were taken to holding cells, and the raid footage ended up online. I believe that poses a risk to our guests. For us, it has always been a matter of principle to work openly and legally.”
In September 2024, security forces raided the “Inferno mystical ball” at St. Petersburg's Trezini Palace Hotel. Participants had paid hundreds of thousands of rubles to attend this elite event, but even that amount no longer guaranteed safety.
Photo from Nastya Ivleeva’s “naked party”
Only swingers could gather in relative safety — or, at least, that was the case until May 2025. Ilya Lukichev, leader of the Russian swingers’ project Svoi Lyudi (“Our People”), still believes that the May raid on the Bizarre club was not a targeted intimidation campaign but a simple mistake. Bizarre shares the building with a well-known Moscow gay club called Tsentralnaya Stantsiya (“Central Station”). “They meant to hit the gay club but ended up raiding Bizarre instead. To the cops, it’s all the same. And the dumb journalists blew it up as a crackdown on swinger clubs,” Lukichev says.
Swingers upholding traditional values
Ilya Lukichev believes far-right activists pose no real threat to swingers: “No one’s been afraid of those idiots for a long time. At first, people were a bit nervous, but then they realized those guys only show up online. In real life, they usually get their asses kicked — and then disappear.”
But police raids, often carried out with assistance from “volunteers,” have nevertheless affected Russia’s swinging scene. According to Lukichev, people now visit clubs less often and prefer private events. As for swing festivals, he says, they’re “breaking all attendance records.”
Ivan, who observes the swinger scene from the sidelines and prefers other types of parties, also believes Lukichev’s brand is doing fine: “Swinging attracts an older crowd with connections. They have their own lobby. They advertise like before and organize group trips to Sochi and Turkey.”
To protect the organizers, announcements and ads for swinger events now deliberately include labels such as “We do not promote LGBT” or “We support family values and oppose LGBT.”
Lukichev sees nothing wrong with this, as he himself does not oppose homophobia: “You can often see anti-LGBT content on my channels. And most swingers, even within the scene, don’t accept gays. There’s no contradiction in swingers supporting family values — we’re for preserving and creating marriages. Sex is sex, and swinging strengthens marriages.”
However, not everyone agreed to an outright ban on LGBT participants. Putting up a label that says “We stand for traditional values” would be pure hypocrisy, says Mikhail (name changed), another organizer of sex-positive events.
“Maybe that could make things safer for attendees. After all, Russia has a law against promoting non-traditional values. But since both ‘promotion’ and ‘traditional values’ are defined so vaguely, it’s impossible to guarantee people’s safety 100%.”
Turned to tantra and therapy
Kinky Party co-founder Tanya Dmitrieva is convinced that talk of strengthening marriage in the context of sex-positive events is entirely justified.
“I understand what swingers mean. The culture of kink also helps strengthen families. When couples have been married for 10 years and have kids, sex often gets worse or disappears from the relationship altogether. Many choose divorce instead of trying something new. However, they could always go to a party — not even meet anyone, just watch others, refresh their relationship, and bring some spark back,” says Tanya. “I offer couples therapy now and help them do the same. Many sex event organizers are placing a bigger emphasis on education and culture.”
Ivan has worked with a variety of sex-positive projects. Some held only one party after the war began and then shut down. Others switched to transformational workshops — events focusing on mindfulness and personal growth. Some turned to tantra and tantric sex. Ivan also mentioned a massage therapist who reduced his online presence but continues to offer his services.
In 2022–2023, a significant part of the kink community ended up abroad, and Russians who fled the war brought the demand for erotic parties to Georgia. As of today, Kinky Party has only one franchise — in Tbilisi. Interestingly, imitators soon appeared in Batumi, using the same brand without permission from its owners.
In Moscow, Kinky Party left behind a warehouse of equipment and décor. A sex-positive event organizer in the Moscow Region recently announced that she had purchased the facility along with all its contents, adding that her project “has become the heir and successor to the atmosphere of freedom, celebration, and love created by the founders of Kinky Party.” Her events, however, will be private, without media coverage or public promotion.
Private sex events “for insiders” are nothing new in Russia. In the 1990s and 2000s, swingers and the BDSM community ran their own private clubs and parties. But in the second half of the 2010s, all of it began to come out from the underground. Kinky Party and other organizers spearheaded the effort to get out of the shadows, explains Dmitrieva: “[Sex events] were always in secret, underground, with hidden faces. Even sex shops were usually located in basements. We wanted to meet openly. And an entire generation had the opportunity to do that. Now, with us and other organizers out of business, everything has gone back underground.”
Villas, apartments, shopping malls
For the New Year 2024, Ivan attended a sex-positive house party in a fairly spacious rented apartment. Participants had sex in the rooms, and to create more space, inflatable mattresses were added to the beds.
In the living room, they set up a zone for various sexual practices. They even brought an X-cross — similar to the one that got Yekaterinburg resident Stanislav Slovikovsky prosecuted for “offending religious feelings.”
Apparently, more props will be added in the future, since the party organizers were the ones who purchased the Kinky Party warehouse. But large-scale events in Russia came to an end at the close of 2023.
Photo: Kinky Party
Ivan notes that the most popular format is a house party with up to 30 guests and other event formats with up to a hundred participants. The largest event this year was co-organized by four like-minded projects and drew 250 people.
The Moscow Region has several villas with owners who are supportive of the cause.These venues have long been known within the scene, and nearly all sex-positive projects have staged their events there of late.
For safety reasons, participants are given a very vague description of the location during registration: “A 20-minute drive from the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD).” The exact coordinates are sent at the last minute to guests who passed the screening.
Another recent event took place at a shopping mall near a metro station in suburban Moscow. The hosts specifically warned guests not to arrive dressed up and to change into their themed costumes only once inside.
For a high-end party with 50 guests, organizers booked a hotel penthouse in central Moscow. Even though the suite had its own private entrance, the organizers instructed guests to keep a low profile and not to attract the attention of security guards.
Entry fees vary for men, women, and couples, and also depend on the date of purchase. A house party ticket can cost 6,000–7,000 rubles ($75-$90), while attendance fees at a more elaborate event range from 20,000 to 30,000 rubles ($250-$380). There are also elite events where a single man has to pay over 150,000 rubles ($1,900) for entry.
The price depends not only on the host’s appetite and rental costs, but also on the ratio of staff to participants. Large events feature erotic show performers, BDSM practitioners, and erotic massage therapists.
Some of the practitioners are volunteers. They spend a few hours entertaining other participants, and the rest of the time they enjoy the party for free. Ivan says that his work usually costs the organizers around 5,000 rubles ($63).
Before the war and the start of the police raids, organizers of erotic parties always hired private security. After going underground, security is only hired for elite events. At regular gatherings, volunteers keep order.
By invitation only
Guest screening has become particularly important. When a former organizer of sex-positive events wanted to throw a themed birthday party, he rented a hotel and asked his friends to invite people who would fit. Ivan explains: “[Hosts] prefer to recruit participants only by recommendation — ‘through one cockshake,’ so to speak. This host allowed sharing his contact information, but for the sake of secrecy, he asked us to say that he wasn’t the organizer.”
Ivan explains the new measures: “As always, the screening process consists of a questionnaire and an interview. But now the form includes a question about LGBT, and if an applicant shows homophobic attitudes, they won’t even be invited to the interview.”
Nevertheless, homosexual practices at such events have always been extremely rare. The LGBT component was usually limited to lesbian interactions. In light of the ban on the “international LGBT movement” in Russia, even organizers of private and unofficial parties take extra precautions. As Ivan recounts, volunteers at a recent event were explicitly instructed: “Girls, don’t overdo the lesbian stuff; focus your attention on the boys.”
Photo: Kinky Party
Sasha (name changed) once came to Moscow from a large city in the Urals. She became fascinated with sex events in the capital and, between the coronavirus pandemic and the war, managed to organize several parties in her hometown. Now she teaches tantra, leans toward monogamy and a conventional family, but occasionally meets with her former fellow activists.
“Everyone sticks to their small community. There are Telegram chats with 100–150 people — those are safe spaces,” she says. “New people are brought in hand-in-hand. No one pressures anyone into anything. They practice enthusiastic consent. People can meet at someone’s apartment in the middle of the week and just play board games, and then set a day to organize a party. I sometimes also join them for board games and a beer.”
For Ivan, these gatherings are a full-fledged second life. At his day job, no one suspects his sexual escapades. And the parties are a space of freedom that goes beyond sex, he explains: “At the last trip, there were about 60 of us. I gave massages to 15 of them and talked to another ten. I found that, for younger girls, the topic of the war simply doesn’t exist. But older, mature women understand everything and are opposed to it. When talking with the guys, I would throw in some jokes about Putin and the war, and I saw understanding in their eyes.”
From safe space to underworld
Sasha from the Urals now has mixed feelings about the sex-positive movement. She believes that the pursuit of sexual freedom once destroyed her marriage. The turning point was a sexually transmitted infection. After seeking medical advice, Sasha went to psychotherapy and reevaluated her views: “I realized that, no matter what anyone says, it’s a health risk. And as I worked through my traumas, I understood that I'd treated sex-positivity as a way to fill a void in my soul, to solve my problems.”
According to Sasha, many couples at these parties are wounded, trying to patch up their relationships. There are also many single people with nothing else to do. Some of them suffer from a sex addiction, Sasha observes: “For many women, open-mindedness is just an act. In reality, all they want is to be loved. Almost all of them confessed to me: as you go home from a party, everyone’s touched every part of your body, and it kind of feels nice, but there's still that void inside.”
Still, Sasha admits that she finds it much easier to build monogamous relationships with men who have been through the same scene and gotten to know themselves and their bodies better: “The culture of kink offers a lot in terms of education. I’m glad I got to experience it. The activists promoted a certain ideology, meaning, values — the culture of enthusiastic consent. But it would be good if hosts had to obtain a license for events, so that all parties were safe, both psychologically and medically.”
So far, exactly the opposite has happened. The most conscientious and responsible hosts have become the victims of the moral crusade, while underground orgies with drugs are not going away, Sasha notes.