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.
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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.” 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. Russia’s war in Ukraine is causing a European refugee crisis on a scale not seen since World War II and raising fears of a return to Cold War-era dynamics.