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In a side alley just off a main street, there is another world. A drag singer in a long blonde wig and a black evening gown croons the opening lines of Back to Black by Amy Winehouse.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people watch as theatre lights catch the meticulous detail of the performer’s makeup. As the song goes on, the audience begins to sing along. For a moment, the fantasy becomes real; at least for one night, in this shabby bar.
It was autumn 2024, and Amirovka was one of Almaty’s best-known queer clubs, one of at least three bars in the city hosting drag several nights a week.
In a region where many queer people still hide their identities for fear of family rejection, public judgment, or violence, places like it offered a rare chance to gather openly.
By April 2026, Amirovka was gone, and the few queer spaces left face frequent police raids.
In December 2025, Kazakhstan passed a law banning so-called LGBTQ propaganda, echoing legislation introduced in Russia. Unlike in Russia, the queer community here has not been designated an “extremist movement”, but the fear that this could come next is real.
In just a matter of months, Almaty, a city many once described as Central Asia’s queer capital, has begun to close in on itself.
Becoming Natasha
When Slava, a lanky, flamboyant man, opens the door to his flat in a residential district of Almaty, what unfolds is a world of colourful feathers, gowns, and wigs. Recording equipment and lamps are scattered throughout the room. With the anti-propaganda law now in place, he is planning to move some of his performances online.
He is 27 and, by day, works as an analyst for a Russian sociological research firm. By night, since 2024, he has been known as Natasha Homophobia, one of Almaty’s top drag performers. Today, it is hard for him to tell where Slava ends and Natasha begins.
“I’ve been thinking about that. It seems to me like there’s no difference. Like with any mask, that’s the magic of theater: people allow themselves more when they’re wearing one,” Slava says.
“They throw stones at others, say nasty things, and let themselves do things they normally wouldn’t. To me, it’s like a hyperbolic version of Slava. It’s just that in my daytime life, I’m a serious senior analyst, but here, I can be anyone.”
Slava was born in Shchyokino, in Russia’s Tula region, but left the country after the war in Ukraine began. He did not want to be conscripted, and he opposed the war. At first, he and his partner Gleb, a producer, planned to move to Georgia, but administrative obstacles left them stranded in Almaty. Soon, they fell in love with the city.
“Almaty is basically a liberal city, I think. If the idea of a gay capital applies anywhere in this region, in Central Asia, then I think Almaty could be called that,” he says.
Natasha Homophobia had been taking shape inside Slava for some time. At first, he was simply a fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the American reality series in which drag queens compete for the crown.
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A drag queen is typically a performer, often a gay man, who uses costume, makeup and performance to embody a heightened or theatrical form of femininity.
At first, Slava had no desire to perform himself. That changed when he saw one contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race who inspired him. Soon after, Natasha Homophobia was born. Slava shows me a YouTube video of one of his performances.
“It’s called Becoming Natasha. I imagined myself as a victim of Chernobyl radiation, living in a radioactive forest. And, in a way, it stayed like that,” he says. “And it’s actually true, because where I was born, there really was radioactive rain. I still joke about it.”
Natasha might never have existed without Slava’s move to Almaty and Amirovka, the city’s main queer venue, where she began performing.
“I immediately fell in love with this place. I didn’t expect to see anything like it here. And unlike the drag I had seen on TV or in Russia, which often meant walking from one corner to another with a microphone and a backing track, here, it’s different. It’s more theatrical. The performances are complex,” Slava explains.
“There’s dramaturgy, set design, special effects. People are really flexing their creative muscles and creating something truly interesting. I haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else.”
As Natasha Homophobia, Slava competed twice in Dragon, a drag competition at Amirovka, coming second both times. As he explains, Amirovka developed a system for producing new artists.
“It was like a real talent school,” he says. “Every six months, a new group of performers would emerge. They were helped to find their characters, improve their skills, work on props, wigs, costumes. There was a strong sense of community – everyone was eager to create something exciting, to make it great.”
There wasn’t much money involved, what mattered was the community. It was like drag in its original form: underground entertainment for poor transgender people and their friends, Slava explains.
“The whole idea is about turning trash into treasure. That DIY spirit is a huge part of this art form. You don’t need big money, you just need a space and a community. And that’s what created an entire culture of its own.”
The man behind it all
In April 2025, Amir Shaikezhanov, a man in his late thirties, with a friendly manner and laughing eyes, sat down on Amirovka’s rooftop to talk about how he had managed to create a space where queer people from across Central Asia could feel at home.
Amir had known he was gay from a young age. But for a long time, he thought he was the only one. He had grown used to the idea that loneliness might simply be his fate. Then he moved to Almaty and discovered that he was not alone after all.
He began frequenting the bars where queer people gathered, but he was troubled by what he found there: heavy drinking, fights, and what he saw as a culture shaped by internalised homophobia.
He wanted to build something different: spaces where people could feel accepted, loved, and treated with dignity. He helped to launch Kok.team, a website for queer Kazakhstanis, and Amanbol, the first project in Kazakhstan to offer HIV self-testing.
Since bars did not always feel safe, around 2016, he began inviting people from the community to his own 50-square-metre apartment for get-togethers that sometimes lasted for days. In time, people started calling the place Amirovka – Amir’s house.
He became one of Almaty’s most prominent activists, community organisers, and LGBTQ voices, speaking openly, under his own name, about issues affecting the community, from transphobia to the stigma surrounding people living with HIV.
As the years passed, Amirovka took on a more permanent form. Though it changed locations several times after first emerging in 2018, it remained a refuge for queer people from across Central Asia, and, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many from Russia as well.
Amir made a point of ensuring that Russian migrants were welcomed into the bar and the wider queer scene. His partner, Bakhtiyar, ran Dragon – the competition where Slava – Natasha Homophobia first found a platform for his work. Together, they had become something close to an institution.
Several times during our meeting, people interrupted to ask Amir for help or advice. Each time, he responded patiently, ready to deal with whatever issue had arisen. He spoke a lot about trans rights, about the violent language that had become normalised in some drag spaces, and about the need for more inclusion, more care, and more love.
That night on the rooftop, I asked him whether he feared that the anti-LGBTQ propaganda politics already entrenched in Russia, and the wider anti-queer backlash that had followed, might eventually reach Kazakhstan.
He said he wasn’t worried. Kazakhs, he told me, were not like Russians. They minded their own business more. He remained hopeful about the future.
One year on, Amir is in prison.
In June 2025, a transgender man from Russia named Yelisey, who had worked at Amirovka, published a heart-wrenching video on social media telling that Amir had raped him. Attached to the statement was security camera footage showing a sexual encounter between the two.
Soon afterwards, police arrested Amir on charges of rape and of exposing another person to HIV through sex.
Kazakhstan’s queer community was horrified. Some people turned against him, and against Amirovka itself. Others directed their anger at Yelisey.
“Amirgate, as I call it, is a great tragedy for Kazakhstan as a whole, not just for the LGBTQ movement. I don’t want to speak for the man himself, but he was very helpful,” Slava says.
“As an activist, as an employer, as someone who created a cultural space for artists and for people, a safe space where they could come, he played an important role. Many people felt better there than at home. Many were there every day. It was simply a very important place.”
Amir should face the consequences of his actions, Slava thinks. But his prolonged detention and the repeated postponement of his trial dates by the court appear to be politically motivated decisions by the authorities. Ten months have passed since his arrest, and Amir remains in custody. It is unclear when his trial will conclude.
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“I don’t think there is any sense of justice here. Despite the charges, he is clearly being held not because of them, but because he is an inconvenient person for the authorities. And if we’re talking about the original conflict, there are no winners at all. Everyone lost, and only the authorities won,” Slava says.
Amirovka did not survive the scandal. For several months, the space operated under a different name – Icon, but it soon closed.
The new reality
For this story, I reached out to several active drag performers and bar owners originally from Kazakhstan, but they either did not respond to my messages or declined to speak. Following the introduction of the propaganda law people have begun to fear that the safe spaces they have spent years building may be at risk.
“Even before the law was introduced and adopted, we had already been facing severe repercussions and attacks. For example, in October last year, one of our colleagues from another organisation was kidnapped by the military. I was detained for three hours. I was also attacked by homophobic groups – and by the police as well,” says Temirlan, a 22-year-old activist with Queer KZ.
“Now they will have a legal basis to act. Under the new law, we can face up to 15 days of imprisonment for publishing anything related to LGBTQ topics, as it can be labeled so-called ‘propaganda.’ We believe this law essentially institutionalises hate crimes and discrimination.”
Temirlan sees several reasons why the government decided to pass the law. First, there is pressure from Russia, which has sponsored anti-gender groups in Kazakhstan. Secondly, he says the authorities exploit queer people as a political scapegoat.
“The government needs public approval, and the easiest way to gain it is by appealing to homophobic attitudes in society. Since a large part of the population holds these views, it becomes an easy way to score political points,” he says.
“There is a growing narrative portraying us as being against the nation and the state – as if we want to destroy them – which is, of course, absurd and untrue.”
But queer nightlife and drag in Almaty did not disappear. Alongside Kazakh-owned venues, Russian capital entered the scene following the invasion of Ukraine. Today, Blush bar in Almaty is one of only two venues where drag performances are still held: every day from midnight onward, featuring both Kazakh and Russian performers.
Just off a main street, the entrance lies at the end of a long corridor resembling a garage, guarded by security staff who meticulously check visitors’ bags and documents. They ensure that no unauthorised individuals can enter the venue.
Inside, to the left, hangs a tall pink sequin curtain set against a glossy pink wall. A large shelf displays lavish high heels and a crown: very flashy, very ostentatious, and very drag.
In the dressing room, two performers finish their elaborate makeup and prepare for their shows. They carry themselves like divas, unapproachable and composed, and it is unclear whether this is a pose or part of their character.
Shortly after midnight, the show begins. One after another, performers, some accompanied by dancers and sophisticated visuals, take to the stage, captivating the audience with their skill and glamour. Unlike at Amirovka, they do not sing live, but the performances are mesmerising.
Every now and then, the audience’s attention shifts to uniformed police officers who enter the venue without any clear purpose. Are they monitoring the situation? Looking for violations of written or unwritten rules? Trying to instill fear? No one knows. Their visits have become so frequent that they no longer surprise anyone.
It is hard to define what a drag bar owner should look like. But if we rely on stereotypes, probably not like Artem Demchenko. The 44-year-old from Novosibirsk, Russia, is wearing a multicolored tracksuit and sport shoes, with short hair and a casual beard.
He and his partner opened a venue in Almaty after their drag bar in Krasnoyarsk was shut down by the authorities.
On February 23, Russia celebrates Defender of the Fatherland Day, a national holiday honoring the military. And Demchenko’s bar featured a special programme.
“On February 23, 2024 there was a program. It featured drag performers and naturally, there were performances that included costumes resembling military uniforms,” Demchenko says.
“A young man filmed the performance. He was a member of our community. Then he got into an argument with other guests and he was asked to leave because of his behavior. After that, he sent a video of our performer to a well-known public figure, Ekaterina Mizulina. The next day, we were surprised to see ourselves featured on her blog.”
Soon after, their bar was surrounded by people belonging to the “Northern Man” movement, Demchenko explains, a group advocating for the purity of the Russian race, that began intimidating their guests and security.
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“Then the police arrived, but instead of protecting us, they forced everyone to the floor and said they now had a warrant accusing us of extremism,” he says.
After the scandal, the bar in Krasnoyarsk was shut down, and Demchenko and his partner decided to leave. Russia was no longer safe. Since they already had contacts and friends in the local queer scene in Almaty, they moved their business to Kazakhstan.
But recently, the situation in the city has become more tense.
“There have always been raids. They regularly carry out so-called ‘operational and preventive measures,’ when they enter an establishment – ours or any other – where there might be 30 or 40 people, and try to find some kind of violation. Hookahs, balloons, someone smoking, anything,” Demchenko explains.
“And sometimes, frankly, it reaches the point of absurdity. Since January 1st, laughing gas balloons have been classified as a narcotic substance in Kazakhstan. There was one club – our competitor – and they didn’t get rid of them. Officials came to their venue at the end of January, confiscated the cylinders and shut the club down.”
It is still unclear what the limits of the new propaganda law will be, and whether bars like Blush will be targeted. While the Blush bar is not a newspaper or a bookstore, they do run social media.
“How do you determine what counts as propaganda and what doesn’t? No one knows,” Demchenko says.
After two years of operation, Demchenko and his partner are considering leaving again. The pressure has simply become too great. If they do, Almaty will lose one of the last venues where queer people can enjoy themselves in peace and acceptance.
The queer nostalgia
The heyday of Almaty’s queer scene seems to have passed. Outside Blush, a young regular named Sergey does not hide his pessimism. In his late twenties, he was born in northern Kazakhstan, but it was Almaty that helped him become the confident and extravagant man he is today.
“We’re seeing the consequences in the clubs themselves, there are more and more inspections, disrupting our peace and quiet. Before, it wasn’t like this. Is being blonde or wearing a sequined blouse considered LGBT propaganda or not? This lack of clarity and understanding traps you in endless questions,” he says.
“I think that we’re moving toward something like a Russian-style regime. Before, everything felt relatively free. I remember when I came to Almaty in 2015, I saw guys walking hand in hand in a shopping center. But over the years, things have gotten worse. And more and more, we’re thinking about moving – to Poland, or somewhere else in Europe.”
Slava-Natasha is not very optimistic either. He is also thinking about leaving Kazakhstan.
“I’ve been performing less lately, only when I’m really invited, only if I truly want to. Especially after Amirovka closed. It was such a comfortable place. The stage was big, the audience was appreciative, and everyone knew me,” he says.
“I see that many people from this new wave that emerged around Dragon are stepping back. It scared a lot of them so much that they left drag altogether. Some have even closed their social media accounts. Many are planning to leave.”
The decline of the queer scene, along with the introduction of the censorious propaganda law, has already had an impact not only on the lives of LGBTQ people in the city and across Kazakhstan, but on the arts scene too.
Before the law came into force in March, Mark Kuklin, a theatre director from Almaty, had the freedom to explore issues related to queer rights in his work. At Artishok, one of the city’s leading avant-garde theatres, he staged Dark Room, a play by an anonymous Belarusian writer.
It tells a coming-of-age story of a gay boy in authoritarian Belarus, touching on migration, sexual exploration, and abuse. The play is bold, heart-wrenching, and unmistakably queer. It may have been one of the last times such a work was performed in a Kazakh theatre.
“Everyone will start self-censoring. At least in the theater, they’re already doing it. All my friends and colleagues, and I’m in touch with a lot of people from both independent and state theatres, are experiencing this,” he says, sitting in a hip café in central Almaty.
“My friends and I often joked that Almaty was the queer capital of Central Asia, because life here was completely different. It was a wonderful city. I loved it very much, and I always wanted Almaty to be among those great cities – those Babylons, as I call them – like New York, Berlin, Paris, maybe Moscow at one time, or St. Petersburg. But it’s definitely not there anymore.”
Kuklin believes that anti-LGBTQ propaganda is just the first step in the government’s broader campaign to control public life and enforce censorship. It is also one of the reasons he and many of his friends are considering leaving the country in search of a “freer society.”
“Fear eats away at the soul. I think so because I see it in the theater, in people’s insecurity,” Kuklin says. “I would probably say that I’m afraid of fear itself. It’s better to do what you’re afraid of than to simply be afraid.”
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