UPDATE: Nikolai Alexeyev Apparently Quits Gay Russian Activism After Michael Lucas Article

After gay porn maven Michael Lucas wrote an op-ed for Out.com discrediting Nikolai Alexeyev (or Alekseev) — Russia’s most prominent LGBT rights activist — Alexeyev took to Twitter and threatened to sue Lucas.

Alexeyev was feared missing or crazy after a series of bizarre posts on his Facebook a few weeks ago in which he claimed he hated the West. Lucas, as a gay Jew who grew up in Russia, argues that Alexeyev has been either bought off or coerced into becoming  the Kremlin’s “pocket gay.” Either way, Lucas writes, “he can no longer be trusted as an advocate for LGBT Russians.”

Lucas points to an August 23 interview during which Alexeyev said there was no persecution of gays in Russia and the Western media had basically made it all up. However, for the past eight years, Alexeyev has dedicated himself to the cause of LGBT rights in Russia, often reaching out to the West — and the Western media — for support. Therefore, his sudden about-face leads Lucas to think of the Russian Anti-Zionist Committee — a group of Soviet Jews charged with selling the Kremlin’s anti-Semitic policies to Jews, who for some reason, wanted to get the fuck out of the country:

If “gays are the new Jews” in Russia, as many people have said, then Nikolai Alexeyev is the new Anti-Zionist Committee. Russia is desperate again: The upcoming Sochi Olympics are important to Putin’s sense of his standing in the world, and the international campaign against Russian homophobia is staining them more every day. This campaign is working, and Russia knows it. What better way to slow this movement’s momentum — and to confuse and discourage those in the West who have working for it — than for its most visible advocate to minimize its importance and dismiss it as a Western, anti-Russian plot?

This besmirching of his good name did not sit well with Alexeyev, who tweeted this salvo to Lucas:

Between Nick Gruber and now Nikolai Alexeyev, there’s nary a lace front in sight because Michael Lucas is snatching all of the wigs.

UPDATE: Alexeyeev is apparently quitting activisim altogether, blaming Michael Lucas in a series of Twitter and Facebook posts:

In an email, Lucas referred to the developments as “very sad,” noting, “Another voice silenced by the Kremlin.”

UPDATE 2: And now, Alekseyev has threatened to kill Lucas: