Current Affairs

Russia: Putin bans pro-gay American donors from entering Russia

May 03 2014
Written by Nick Duffy

Vladimir Putin has reportedly blacklisted several key US political donors with ties to the LGBT community, banning them from Russia.

According to the Daily Beast, Putin’s new wave of sanctions is a tit-for-tat response to similar sanctions imposed by Obama over the Ukraine crisis.

In March, the author of Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law, Yelena Mizulina, was banned from the US and had her assets frozen, alongside ten other individuals.

Unlike the US, Russia does not openly publish its blacklists, and so individuals targeted may never know until they apply to travel to Russia and are denied.

However, Moscow sources confirmed to the Beast that a number of top Obama administration donors and lawmakers were targeted, focussing specifically on people with links to the LGBT community.

Russia’s foreign ministry said: “Of course, such actions cannot remain unanswered. Russia responded by undertaking similar measures.”

Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law has most recently been deployed in Crimea, with a planned pride march in Sebastopol banned by authorities.

Ulrike Lunacek MEP, Co-President of the European Parliament’s LGBT Intergroup said: “The spread of these ‘anti-propaganda’ laws and the calls for further discriminatory restrictions are truly worrying.”

A Russian MP last week proposed an amendment which would require all people with HIV to join a register, and to submit their fingerprints for ‘crime prevention’.