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‘We swept into Moscow in Gorbachev’s limousine’: Neil Tennant’s love affair with Russia – before the ‘cancer of Putin’

They played Red Square, launched MTV Russia and got driven home from a gay club by the police. But the freedoms witnessed by Pet Shop Boys have been crushed. Singer Neil Tennant relives those heady days – and calls for a revolution

A British TV presenter, Reggie Yates, made a chilling documentary following homophobes in St Petersburg who were trapping and attacking gay men – a strong indicator that things were getting weird. It felt like the citizens of former parts of the Russian and Soviet empires saw Russia as a nightmare past they didn’t want to return to when the possibility (and for the Baltic states the reality) of EU and Nato membership beckoned. Then Russia could become what surely everyone wants: a peaceful and prosperous country positioned in Europe and linking it to the east, rejecting its past as a bully to both its neighbours and its own citizens; an integral part of world civilisation.

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