TALLINN, Estonia — In the year since Russia’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed any promotion of LGBTQ+ rights, activists say they are experiencing a climate of fear and intimidation in the country.
LGBTQ+ rights have been under legal and public pressure for over a decade under President Vladimir Putin, but especially since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Putin has argued the war is a proxy battle with the West, which he says aims to destroy Russia and its “traditional family values.”
Putin insists Russia doesn’t discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, but he also decries “perversions that lead to degradation and extinction.” Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin last year called gender transitioning “pure satanism” that should stay in the U.S.
Any public representation of gay and transgender people is banned. Gender-affirming medical care and changing one’s gender in official documents is prohibited. With the Supreme Court’s ruling in November 2023 that found “the international LGBT movement” to be extremist, members of the LGBTQ+ community can be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to six years.
As a result, many people like Gela Gogishvili and Haoyang Xu have fled Russia. They lived a happy life in the republic of Tatarstan, where Gogishvili was a pharmacist and Xu was a student from China.
They were detained after the Kremlin in December 2022 expanded its ban of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities.
Authorities accused them of spreading “LGBT propaganda” among minors. Gogishvili was fined, while Xu was put in a detention center for migrants pending deportation. They eventually fled abroad separately, and are seeking asylum in France.
“I’m scared for the queer community in Russia that remains in the country,” Gogishvili said.
Those who remain find themselves pushed into the shadows, marginalized even further and dogged by fear of repression and prison.
“Six years, it’s not a joke,” said Olga Baranova, head of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives. She says activists must decide if what they’re doing is worth that kind of a prison sentence.
Just days after the Supreme Court ruling in 2023, the LGBTQ+ community was rattled by news of police raiding gay bars, nightclubs and venues that hosted drag shows in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities.
Last spring, the first criminal case on charges of involvement with the “LGBT movement” extremist group was lodged against the owner and staff of a bar in the city of Orenburg that held drag performances.
Charges have been filed for displaying symbols such as a rainbow flag - even though many of those accused had nothing to do with the LGBTQ+ community, said human rights lawyer Max Olenichev.
More raids of bars and nightclubs were reported in Moscow last month, almost exactly a year since the Supreme Court ruling.
One man arrested for allegedly running a travel agency for gay customers faces charges of organizing activities of an extremist organization. Independent news outlet Mediazona reported that Andrei Kotov, 48, rejected the charges and said police beat him and administered electric shocks during his arrest, even though he didn’t resist.
This “speaks more about the desire of the authorities to create some kind of atmosphere of fear. It’s not repressions, it’s terror,” said Vladimir, an LGBTQ+ rights advocate in Russia who like many interviewed by AP insisted on being identified only by a first name out of security concerns.
Ikar, a fellow activist and transgender man, described the actions by authorities as “an attempt to intimidate … to make people lose their social connections, stay silent, stay home.”
Vladimir and Ikar belong to an underground LGBTQ+ rights group offering legal aid. Activists thoroughly verify identities of anyone seeking its help.
The group sees a growing number of cases related to violence against LGBTQ+ people, Vladimir said.
Some regional organizations have closed and others have changed their operations. The Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives moved much of its work to online chats and meetings so people can still “support each other,” according to Baranova.
The ban and other repressive laws and rulings have delivered a harsh blow to the already-vulnerable trans community, says Yan Dvorkin, head of the Center T trans rights group.
Finding a job is more difficult, both for those who haven’t changed their gender marker in documents and those who have. Access to gender-affirming medical care is a major issue. Violence has spiked, Dvorkin said, as has harassment and discrimination, including blackmail attempts, by threatening to report them to authorities.
Anna, a 25-year-old transgender Muscovite, said being part of the community provided the courage to transition last year, after the ban on gender-affirming care was enacted.
Anna considers herself lucky to have a good paying job to afford a doctor advising her from abroad on hormonal therapy, and is able to get the medicine in Moscow.
But she said she hasn’t come out to her colleagues for fear of losing her job, and she is sometimes harassed on the street because of her appearance.
She says she has a support network of friends and doesn’t want to leave Russia, even though she’ knows the risks.
Julia, another transgender woman, also says she wants to stay, describing it as a kind of mission to show that “people like me are not necessarily weak.” In her mid-40s, she has a family and children, a successful career, and the respect and acceptance from colleagues and friends.
For her, “it’s about normalizing” being trans, she said.
But much “normalizing” is possible now and in the future is uncertain.
The ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” forces print, TV and movie censorship of LGBTQ+ relations. In a recent example, two Russian streaming services cut a trans character from the 1990 drama series “Twin Peaks.”
At the same time, there is abundant official rhetoric condemning LGBTQ+ people.
Gela Gogishvili, the gay man who fled Russia last year, worries about the next generation of LGBTQ+ people who are currently growing up and “will be taught that (being queer) is bad.”
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