On February 24th, it will mark three years since Russia launched a full-scale attack on my home country, Ukraine. I have never been in Ukraine for over ten years and spent almost every year doing LGBTQ activities.
I was almost an adult when my family left my hometown of Donetsk, after the so-called Donetsk declaration by Russian puppet separatists.
So many things have changed since then. My school friend, along with two small children, had little escape from the Mariupol bombing. The small city in the Donetsk region was little known to outsiders, and was transformed into a battlefield that was the site of his father’s business trip and frequently mentioned in international news. And all my strange acquaintances except Ukraine on the left.
This revealed how the world has moved to globalization and how LGBTQ rights are used as negotiation chips for political debates. And now the fate of LGBTQ Ukrainians is partly dependent on the US
Russian officials used LGBTQ people in war propaganda against the US and Ukraine, as they used LGBTQ people as all symbols of “immorality” and “Western.” For example, Moscow’s patriarch Kirill, the leader of the state-sponsored Russian Orthodox Church, said in 2022 that the war in Ukraine occurred because “the Donetsk people do not want gay pride.”
However, when asked about the transgender L., who lived in Donetsk between 2014 and 2022, they explained that they were not facing the transphobic challenges faced by many strange people in Russia, and that the younger generation of Donetsk is mostly LGBTQ-friendly. Even the Russian puppet forces didn’t really care much about the LGBTQ people of the time.
According to recent votes, 58% of Ukrainians have neutral or positive attributes towards LGBTQ citizens.
LGBTQ phobia was not something Donetsk people were willing to protect in their lives. It was what the Russians used in their propaganda wars to justify the invasion and murder of Ukrainian civilians, including children.
For a long time, Russia labeled LGBTQ organizations as “Western agents” and used anti-American rhetoric in homophobic propaganda.
However, there was the actual help that the Ukrainian LGBTQ community received from the US. Not for some kind of conspiracy, but for humanitarian reasons, Russian state propaganda and Soviet anti-LGBTQ legacies have made it difficult for LGBTQ Ukrainians to find financial support for community activities.
On the anniversary of the war, I spoke with Igor, a Ukrainian lawyer and political analyst born in Donetsk and now an expert on American-Ukrainian relations, based in Vienna.
“US support is essential to maintaining the services of LGBTQ individuals in Ukraine, particularly through USAID and other grant programs,” Ihor explained. “Without that, many of these services will disappear, including specialized shelters, emergency housing, HIV counseling, psychological support, etc. For example, urban shelters like Dnipro and Chernivtsi, which provide LGBTQ people with safe places to escape the war zone, are primarily present thanks to international donor funding.
USAID supported public and education initiatives aimed at fostering open dialogue on LGBTQ issues. This will help you fight anti-LGBTQ propaganda. If the USAID program is dismantled, we will have immediate and serious consequences. Safe spaces could be closed, mental health support could end, making marginalized groups even more vulnerable. Essentially, this disruption of the aid framework rolls back significant advances and puts the LGBTQ community at greater risk with lesser means.
To compensate for these losses, Pro-LGBTQ NGOs should seek alternative sources of funding from private donors, such as the foundations of open society. However, it remains unclear whether these sources can completely replace the scale and consistency of current USAID-supported programs. Essentially, this disruption of the aid framework rolls back significant advances and puts the LGBTQ community at greater risk with lesser means. ”
At the same time, LGBTQ people in Ukraine are currently facing far more serious risks for current American politics.
President Donald Trump told reporters that it is unlikely that Ukraine will return to its pre-2014 border, suggesting that Ukraine should sacrifice Crimea and Donbas regions, including my hometown, Donetsk. The plan was promoted by the American delegation at the Munich Security Conference on February 14th-16th.
Meanwhile, Donetsk’s LGBTQ rights situation has deteriorated. For example, my attempt to find open LGBTQ people in Russian-controlled Donetsk for one of my articles ended with a comment from my bisexual, non-binary friend Roman. A strange person becomes a trap. LGBTQ people in Donetsk were unable to openly talk about their sexual orientation and gender identity.
“In occupied territories like Kherson and Crimea, Russian authorities are specifically targeting LGBTQ+ individuals,” Ihor explained, and Trump’s deal could make everything worse and make it permanent. “The MAGA approach to Russia-Ukraine relations under Trump poses a great risk to the Ukrainian LGBTQ community. If MAGA policies lead to territorial concessions or normalisation of Russian rule over parts of Ukraine, LGBTQ individuals in those regions will face serious oppression under Russian law. Russia’s “gay propaganda” law criminalizes the public expression of LGBTQ identity and advocacy. Previously occupied regions such as Crimea and Donbass have documented cases of violence, arrests and forced loss of targeting LGBTQ individuals under Russian control.
Certainly, that’s true. For example, Russian-occupied Chechnya, the official Russian regime ruled by Ramzan Kadyrov, is hunting LGBTQ people as part of a mass campaign.
Chechnya has always been a very conservative region compared to Western Europe. Sexuality and gender identity was not widely discussed in the independent Chechnya after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia attacked the self-proclaimed Chechnya Republic in 1994. It was a private and family matter, but after 400 years of Chechnya anti-colonial fighting, the Russians decided to break the resistance by destroying the entire private life. Only after Russia controlled Chechnya could a mass terrorist campaign against LGBTQ people begin, and sometimes even non-LGBTQ people have been framed as “gay”, tortured and murdered.
The Chechnya Russian regime was able to send accidental young men who could actively hunt rebels or even frame as terrorist supporters, separatists, or spies to war in Ukraine for better “crime detection” statistics or as feed for “Russia” cannons.
The same can happen not only with LGBTQ Ukrainians, but also with Ukrainians who are independently thinking with the open minds of Donbas and Crimean, if Ukraine is forced to sacrifice their territory to the United States.
It may now be up to Americans to stop the government and help Ukrainian LGBTQ people save themselves from persecution and eradication.
Source: Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News – www.washingtonblade.com
