‘Ukraine could become one of Europe’s most LGBTQ+-friendly countries – if it defeats Russia’

It’s no secret that Russia used homophobic and transphobic propaganda as part of its attempts to justify a full-scale attack on my home country, Ukraine, that began three years ago, on 24 February 2022.

But not so many people are aware of the way Ukrainian society began to accept LGBTQ+ people in the last 10 years, and how the war influenced LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine. 

It is quite possible that if Ukraine has a chance to protect its sovereignty, it will become one of the most LGBTQ+-friendly countries in Europe.

Waging war against freedom and equality

When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the biggest and most influential religious institution in Russia with direct ties to Russian government, made a statement that “Russia is fighting in Ukraine because people in Donetsk don’t want to have gay Prides that are “forced for them” by the Western powers.

In 2024, St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov claimed that Russian troops taking part in the invasion of Ukraine “knew exactly what they were fighting for” because they saw “gender-neutral” in Ukrainian schools. 

I was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, and of course no one has ever forced Ukrainian people to have a gay Pride, and, unfortunately, there is no official policy about gender-neutral toilets in Ukrainian schools, and the vast majority of schools just have never had them.

But those examples are just two of the many. From the beginning of the war, Russia used homophobia and transphobia as justification for violence against Ukrainian people because LGBTQ+ rights are considered to be too ‘pro-Western’ and ‘individualistic’ – the opposite of ‘traditional Russian values’.

Since the beginning of the war, the situation with LGBTQ rights in Russia itself has worsened. 

In 2023, the Russian Supreme Court labeled the “international public LGBT movement” – which does not exist – as an extremist group, adding it to the same register as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. It effectively prevents LGBTQ+ people from openly protecting their rights and speaking up for themselves.

Russia also banned gender transition for all trans people, despite their age or medical statements that their doctors made.

Finally, now Russia is reportedly planning to create a database of LGBTQ+ citizens, with the now-terrified LGBTQ+ community believing that it will lead to the further persecution of LGBTQ+ people.

Ukraine’s road to LGBTQ+ equality

But what happened in Ukraine, and how did the war affect the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ community?

LGBTQ+ people became more visible after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity of 2014, and the system in general became much more tolerant toward minorities. The Labour Code was amended to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

There weren’t just changes in the government policy, but there is also a bigger shift in society.

Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that those kinds of global changes are possible in such a short amount of time. 

I had to leave Ukraine in 2014, and since then I have been engaged in LGBTQ+ activism. I witnessed – first online and then offline – how Ukrainians became more and more LGBTQ+-friendly. 

I have been a refugee in the UK since 2018, and when Russia waged a full-scale invasion in 2022, many new Ukrainian refugees came to the UK, including to my city, Sheffield. 

In my childhood, the Soviet anti-LGBTQ+ mentality was dominant. Transphobic and homophobic statements were extremely common in everyday communication when I was a trans teen in denial. So when I met other Ukrainians as an out trans adult who uses male pronouns but hasn’t gotten hormone therapy yet, I felt shy to introduce myself. But I’ve never heard anything transphobic or homophobic toward myself from local Ukrainian refugees, even from ones who are self-identify as conservative Christian nationalists.

In 2023 the statistic shows that 58% of Ukrainians had neutral or positive attributes toward their LGBTQ citizens, and in 2024 it things got even better – now, more then 70% of people support equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.

In 2024, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised to sign a same-sex partnerships law.

LGBTQ+ people have joined the Ukrainian army, and despite that some of them face everyday queerphobia because having LGBTQ+ people serve openly in the army is something new for Ukrainian society, the fact that queer people are protecting their country in such a crucial moment promotes LGBTQ+ acceptance among the wider Ukrainian population.

Generally speaking, queerphobia in a Ukrainian society is not cool anymore. It happened partly because of the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ activists and partly because Russia, which attacked Ukraine, and Western far-rightists, who are supporting Russia, using queerphobia in their anti-Ukrainian propaganda.

Meanwhile, the situation for LGBTQ+ rights in Ukrainian territories that are under Russian occupation are deteriorating, and Russian soldiers are deliberately targeting queer people on Ukrainian streets, so winning this war and taking back occupied lands could be the question of survival for the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ people, which is important to remember now, when Donald Trump’s administration is trying to push Ukraine to sacrifice those lands to the Kremlin.