In March, a little-known volunteer organization dedicated to “reviving the religious and secular unity of the Russian people” escorted agents from the Internal Affairs Ministry and the Russian National Guard on a raid in the remote city of Orenburg, a city of 500,000 near the Kazakh border.

Their target was a bar called Pose, which was locally famous for its drag shows. The volunteer organization, called Russian Community Orenburg, posted videos of the raid online, highlighting people in skimpy outfits, asking attendees why they were in a “faggot bar,” and showing clubgoers cowering on the floor as agents conducted their search.

Oleksii Polukhin’s 64 days in detention began when Russian soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint. They found that he’d been gathering information about Russian military positions to share with Ukrainian forces; they also discovered he was gay. Mr. Polukhin gave a detailed account of his detention to Projector, an Odesa-based human rights organization. He also confirmed the details to me in a series of interviews.

It was May 2022, just 10 weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Polukhin lived in Kherson, a southern city of around 250,000 people that the Russians conquered with blinding speed in the war’s early days. Mr. Polukhin, rail thin and then 22 years old, was on his way to take pictures of a May 9 Victory Day parade organized by the occupying forces, which he planned to send to a network that shared information from occupied territory. He had been keeping close track of the locations of Russian checkpoints, he said, but this new one caught him by surprise. He was forced to unlock his phone for the soldiers, where they discovered L.G.B.T.Q. Telegram channels, including one that he ran.