Here are photos from events earlier in the day. The captions were written by GayRussia's Nikolai Alekseyev with minor edits by GLN.

All photos copywrited GayRussia.ru


Gay and lesbians activists unveil their banners and flags in front of the statue of Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, the famous 19th Century Russian gay composer. The statute is located in front of the Musical conservatory. The location is a 5 minute walk from Moscow City Hall. This is at 12:45 PM.



In order to have the media but no police and anti-gay counter-protesters, Alekseev gathered the journalists from AFP, AP, Reuters, ARD (German TV first channel), ORF (Austrian TV), and Sweedish TV near a metro station far from the center at 11:15 AM. We had rented a bus to go with all of them. They initially thought that they would go with us up to the City Hall. Our plan was to tell the driver to change the route at the last minute and reach the square where we conducted our first action.

At the same time, about 20 activists gathered near the metro station Arbatskaya at 11 AM. One person was leading the group toward the statute. No one knew in advance in which place they were going. Only the person leading the group was informed.

At 12:45 PM, we arrived with the mini bus and everyone unveilled the banners and the flags.









...more photos to come.

Keep up to date with latest developments on GayRussia's live blog:

ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/08/May/3107.htm