Years before Putin’s troops first fired on Ukraine, Russia began an ideological war against the LGBTQ+ community. Now, the community on both sides is paying the price
Words Finbarr Toesland
Reports of conflict and civil unrest across the world continue to dominate the news agenda. There’s no question the horrors of war can impact anyone, but LGBTQ+ people caught up in them can be disproportionately affected due to added challenges that others simply don’t have to contend with. As the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, Russia is continuing its war of ideology as well as weapons as it attempts to stir up anti-LGBTQ+ feeling at home. In order to consolidate power and create a common enemy, it is scapegoating and targeting queer people — with repercussions for Ukrainian as well as Russian members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Despite homosexuality being legalised in Russia in 1993, following the fall of the Soviet Union two years before, Russia has been strengthening its anti-LGBTQ+ stance for years now. Even before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, members of LGBTQ+ communities in Russia had to contend with an increasingly hostile environment. From the infamous federal law banning ‘gay propaganda’ among minors in 2013 to the series of anti-gay purges in the Russian republic of Chechnya in 2017, any variations from so-called ‘traditional values’ are viewed with disdain in the Federation.
Efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to consolidate power in the aftermath of the 2022 escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war saw a heightened crackdown on independent media, human rights organisations and LGBTQ+ activists. That year saw Sphere Foundation, Russia’s biggest gay rights organisation, shut down by a court in St Petersburg after being accused of sharing LGBTQ+ views that go against traditional values.
“The prosecution said we were undermining the moral foundations of Russian society for our work,” explains Dilya Gafurova, head of Sphere Foundation. “Our legal entity in Russia, all the history and all those years of work, it all crumbled. It didn’t exist anymore.” In Gafurova’s view, Russian political leadership has doubled down on repressive measures against human rights activists and introduced homophobic social policies since the full-scale war as a means to increase the control it has over the Russian people. “If you can control what’s happening, then it’s not going to crumble under you, even if your situation is very precarious,��
