Several dozen masked individuals attacked the first sanctioned gay demonstration in St. Petersburg and vented their anger on migrant workers after police drove the gays from the scene, Fontanka.ru said.
St. Petersburg police also arrested one man who shot a participant in the face with a traumatic gun during the action, which was devoted to the international day against homophobia on Thursday.
This was the first sanctioned gay rally in St. Petersburg since the city legislature passed a law banning gay propaganda in March.
The demonstration participants gathered in Petrovsky Park, and as they released balloons into the air, onlookers behind a police cordon shouted obscenities at them and at police.
Eyewitnesses said an unidentified person suddenly fired a rubber bullet into the face of a demonstration participant, who is now in hospital.
Police moved quickly and placed all the gays on a bus, which then drove off.
The frustrated homophobes attacked another bus stopped at a traffic light that they mistook for the departed vehicle. But the bus was carrying migrant workers from Central Asia. The attackers hurled stones at the bus and somebody tossed smoke bombs on the road in front of it. They also broke windows and started beating the passengers.
There were no police in the area during the bus attack. Police said later they were accompanying the bus with the gay activists.
The press service of the St. Petersburg police also said later that there had been no injuries or damage reported in the bus attack. Presumably, the bus owners, a city company, decided not to seek damages in court in order to keep the incident out of the limelight.
Meanwhile, authorities in Moscow refused to sanction a gay meeting in the capital devoted to parliamentary hearings of a law to ban gay propaganda like in St. Petersburg, said Oleg Oleinik, first deputy chief of the Moscow regional security department.
"We have received a request for the action and... have decided to turn it down," Oleinik said.
The website for gay rights activists earlier cited their intention to hold a gay pride parade regardless of the city authorities' decision.
