Russia ukraine lgbtq
Ukraine Distances Itself from Russia in Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality
“The war in Ukraine, it’s not just a war between Russia and Ukraine. It’s a war between totalitarianism and democracy. It’s a war between homophobia and LGBT rights. It’s a war between death and life.” Borys, a twenty-seven-year-old Ukrainian soldier, delivered this stark assessment to Openly News.
Homophobia has remained common in the post-Soviet space. It is a commonplace to speak that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a strife between authoritarianism and the rights of free people to govern themselves. Less well known is the marked divergence in equality for LGBTQ+ persons between countries that once held allegedly similar views.
In Ukraine, the fact that many LGBTQ+ persons have taken up arms and joined the military and supported the war in other ways is contributing to rapidly changing attitudes.
This stands in marked contrast to the state of affairs in Russia, where the Kremlin focuses precisely on further isolating and attacking LGBTQ+ people in Russia and in the occupied regions of Ukraine. This serves Russia’s geopolitical interests and, more narrowly, the intere
LGBT troops on Ukraine's front line fight homophobia at home
BBC News, reporting from Kyiv
One corner of Kyiv’s symbolic pivotal square is now carpeted in thousands of tiny blue and yellow flags, in tribute to Ukraine’s fallen soldiers. Earlier this month, a group of activists gathered to combine a different type of flag to the ever-growing collection. They had unicorns in their centre, to represent each gay soldier that had been killed in the war.
The deaths of LGBT soldiers in Ukraine have exposed an inequality. They do not have the same rights as heterosexual troops. Male lover marriage is illegal, sense when these soldiers are killed, their partners perform not have the right to decide what happens to their bodies, nor are they entitled to state support.
A 30-year-old costume designer, Rodion, had reach to plant a flag in honour of his former boyfriend Roman, who was killed in the early months of the invasion, the day before his 22nd birthday.
Roman and five others from his brigade died in a missile attack neighboring Kupiansk, close to Kharkiv, after a local family leaked their position to the Russians.
“All this death, all this blood, it’s
Ukraine: Discrimination and expectation drive LGBTQ+ soldiers
"I've been open about my sexual orientation all my life," says Roman Abrashyn, a 25-year-old lgbtq+ drone pilot in the Ukrainian army. After coming out at the age of 15, he was supported by friends, his parents and two brothers, one of whom now serves in the same unit.
Abrashyn enlisted in the Ukrainian armed forces in April 2024. Since then, he's hardly faced any prejudice or discrimination. When fellow soldiers found out about his sexual orientation, most of them reacted neutrally, he recalls. "There were no strange questions."
He is more worried that hundreds of openly LGBTQ+ soldiers in Ukraine don't delight in the same rights as their heterosexual comrades. The abbreviation LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, and queer people, but also includes those with other identities, such as people who are intersex, asexual, bisexual or transgender.
Unequal treatment of LGBTQ+ partners
Soldiers from Abrashyn's unit include made themselves at home among crates full of drones in a easy building. Abrashyn is the commander of a group of drone pilots who mostly work from basements and cellars, as they are constantly being t
Russian authorities have been rounding up gay men and coercing them to clash in Ukraine, according to some recent reports.
The Russian leader has long vilified the gay community in Russia and introduced a raft of new anti-LGBTQ+ laws while promoting supposedly “traditional” masculinity as part of his narrative of creating support for the war. He regularly uses conservative values and the idea of a “traditional” family as part of his anti-west – and anti-Ukraine – rhetoric.
In 2022, when Putin first announced his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he described it as a defence against the west’s “destruction of our traditional values”. A year later, the Russian parliament outlawed what it calls the “global LGBT movement” as “extremism”.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, support for LGBTQ+ rights has risen significantly, with some lgbtq+ Ukrainians associating homophobia with Russian imperialism.
Putin’s anti-LGBTQ+ conduct and speeches may contain shored up support for the Ukrainian cause among liberally minded western allies. But Ukraine’s treatment of its gay soldiers is not always as positive a picture of acceptance as has been painted.
“Being an LGBT soldier in Ukraine means not just figh
Compare LGBT Rights in Russia & Ukraine
27 / 100
46 / 100
32 / 100
57 / 100
23 / 100
35 / 100
Since 1996
Since 1991
Since 1995
Since 1996
Since 2023
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Since 2016
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Since 1983
Since 2015
Since 2015
Since 2023
Since 2016
Since 2003
Since 2022