Opinion polls show Ukrainians have become more accepting of gay rights over the last decade. Last year’s annual gay pride parade in Kyiv drew 7,000 people - a victory, even if police were called in to fend off anti-gay protesters. But he says things are slowly getting better. One prominent church leader has called the COVID-19 pandemic “punishment” for the expansion of same-sex marriage across the world.ĭvizhon, the co-founder of a nonprofit group pushing for LGBTQ rights, is still afraid to hold his boyfriend’s hand in public. Gay marriage is illegal in Ukraine, LGBTQ people are not protected by anti-discrimination laws, and the influential Christian Orthodox Church views homosexuality as a sin. Ukraine was never a utopia for gays and transgender people, Dvizhon said. The war’s high stakes have led some LGBTQ Ukrainians to try to flee, while others have stayed and joined the resistance. Putin, he said, has long used “the specter of LGBT rights as a political wedge issue” to appeal to conservatives at home and abroad.Īs Putin has made gay people the boogeymen for all of Russia’s ills, Reid said, he has also fueled “a demonstrable increase in discrimination and violence.” “None of this augurs well for LGBT people in Ukraine,” said Graeme Reid, director of the LGBTQ rights program at Human Rights Watch. ambassador to the United Nations warned last month that “LGBTQI+ persons” are included on lists created by Russian forces of Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.”
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Now, with tens of thousands of Russian troops encircling major Ukrainian cities, gay, lesbian and transgender people are worried about what a Russian takeover might mean for them.
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And during a series of anti-gay purges in Russia’s Muslim-majority Chechen Republic, in which officials kidnapped, tortured and in some cases killed men suspected of having sex with other men, the Kremlin turned a blind eye.Īt the same time, life for LGBTQ people in Ukraine has slowly been improving. Putin has called gender fluidity “a crime against humanity,” and equated homosexuality with pedophilia.Ī “gay propaganda” law passed in Russia in 2013 made it illegal to promote gay rights and has been used to jail activists and shut down LGBTQ support groups.