Uncloseted Media published this article on May 2.

By HOPE PISONI | Natalia Soloviova always knew she was putting herself at risk. As the chair of the Russian LGBT Network, the largest queer advocacy group in the country, she had spent years preparing detailed security protocols for what she would do if the government came after her.

But it was still a nasty shock when she had to use them. In November 2023, almost two weeks before Russia’s supreme court would designate the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organization, Soloviova’s heart sank when she watched Channel One, a state-funded TV network, air a report about her organization. They flashed her and her colleagues’ names on screen while accusing the organization of “extremist” activities, including spreading propaganda to minors and trying to destroy “traditional family values.”

“It was so disturbing, and it made me physically sick,” Soloviova told Uncloseted Media.

She knew she had to get out. The following days blurred together as she checked off the steps in her security protocol: she called her lawyers, told her mom and wife she was leaving, and boarded a plane to another country. Over the next few years, she would move between several countries before settling in New York City.

It all happened so fast that she didn’t process her emotions until a month later, when she was scrolling Instagram and saw a video of her hometown, Novosibirsk.

“I start just crying … because my previous life was lost,” she says. “I started to feel anger for the government, for the situation itself, because it was absolutely horrific and absolutely unfair.”

While U.S. intelligence agencies under the Trump administration have indicated an interest in targeting trans people, Russia’s extremism designation has allowed for a whole other level of persecution. Because the designation targets the entire LGBTQ movement, the court’s ruling allows the government to impose broad crackdowns on the community.

As of June 2025, Human Rights Watch had identified 101 people convicted on LGBTQ extremism charges, with punishments ranging from fines to 12-year prison sentences. Since late last year, the government has also taken eight Russian LGBTQ advocacy organizations to court, aiming to label them as extremist groups.

These cases are ongoing — Soloviova’s organization was just declared as extremist on April 27.

“I woke up at home with my wife, and the first thing I saw were messages from our lawyers,” Soloviova says about the news. “Honestly, I was furious. But as usual, there was no time to be angry. My first thought was my colleagues still in Russia. I spent the entire morning in bed, messaging back and forth about emergency evacuations, security measures and our next steps.”

People have been jailed for posting photos of pride flags in an 11-person Telegram chat and for wearing rainbow-colored earrings. In response, LGBTQ advocates have gone underground, finding new ways to support a terrified community. Despite everything, Soloviova says that “most organizations” have continued to do their work.

“They can ban us on paper, but they cannot erase us,” Soloviova says. “We will not abandon our values, because human life, safety and dignity matter more than any repressive labels.”

How did Russia get here?

The Russian government began targeting the LGBTQ community in 2013, when they passed a law banning the spread of “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual orientation” to minors. The next year, Russia’s military occupied Crimea, leading to condemnation from the U.S. and other world powers.

Sasha Kazantseva, queer sex educator and author of “The Conservative Web: Russia’s Worldwide War on LGBTQ+ Rights,” says that in order to combat the backlash, Russian President Vladimir Putin leaned into “traditional values ideology” to build support among more conservative countries.

“[Putin says] ‘Western ideology is about making your kids trans and gay, and we can save your kids and your traditional families,’” Kazantseva told Uncloseted Media. “LGBTQ people are very important for this traditional values conservative ideology as an image of some internal enemy.”

After invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin’s government escalated their attacks on Russia’s LGBTQ community. They expanded their anti-propaganda law to include adults, and in 2023 they banned trans people of all ages from medically transitioning or changing their legal gender. On Nov. 30, 2023, they issued the extremism ruling.

“[In] 2022, they see again that people are not happy with the war, and they start to play the same game as 10 years ago,” Kazantseva says. “Nobody cared [about trans people], and out of nowhere, Putin starts to mention trans people in every speech.”

Since then, things have escalated. Last November, the Justice Ministry began a court case to declare Irida, a small LGBTQ advocacy group, as an extremist organization. Eight advocacy groups, including ComingOut and the Russian LGBT Network, both of which provide services including psychological support and legal consultation to LGBTQ Russians, have had similar cases against them.

Crackdowns under the extremism ruling

Maks Olenichev, a European Union-based lawyer who supports Russian LGBTQ defendants in court, says there are two types of charges for violating extremism laws.

First, displaying the symbols of an extremist group — often the rainbow pride flag in this case — is considered an administrative offense. Of the 101 individuals HRW identified, 81 were convicted for displaying symbols. First-time offenders face fines or short jail sentences, while repeat offenders can receive up to four years in prison.

Second, participation in the international LGBT movement is a criminal offense punishable by up to 12 years in prison. HRW identified at least 20 people facing these charges.

Participation in the movement can seemingly include any public activities related to the LGBTQ community. Authorities arrested several employees at Eksmo, Russia’s largest publishing house, for extremism because some of their books contained LGBTQ themes. And last year, a Moscow court posthumously found Andrey Kotov, the leader of a Russian gay travel agency, guilty of extremism after he died in a pretrial detention center.

“If [Kotov] had asked me whether he could do it, I would say, ‘Yes you could do it, it’s legal.’ And then he goes to jail and dies there,” says Ksenia, who works outside of Russia as legal assistance program coordinator for ComingOut. “I have 20 years’ experience in law. What can we expect from people who are not experienced lawyers?”

Olenichev agrees: “There’s no 100 percent foolproof way to not being charged with anything.”

Alise Sever learned this the hard way in 2024, when her Halloween weekend celebrations were interrupted by masked police officers banging down the doors. Sever was partying at Black Clover, an LGBTQ-friendly club she had opened just over a year earlier in Kirov, Russia.

At 2 a.m., militarized special forces burst in to raid the club and immediately hauled Sever off to the precinct while they pinned several patrons against the wall, arrested them and confiscated what came out to be roughly 1 million rubles, or $10,000, worth of music equipment, alcohol, and other club property a price so steep that the business would need to shut down.

“I knew that something [like this] could happen,” Sever, 28, told Uncloseted Media. “But I was sad. I was grieving a loss of money, a loss of the time and work that I have put into this.”

Sever and five other people who were arrested that night — including the club’s co-founder and multiple queer artists — were charged with extremism. As part of the court proceedings, Russian police revealed that they had been monitoring Sever and her girlfriend for almost a year and had amassed thousands of pages of documents containing information about her and her business as well as transcripts of intercepted messages and phone calls.

“They apply these laws very randomly, and they do it not to show that this person is the most brutal criminal you can imagine, they do it to show that anyone can be targeted by this law,” Kazantseva says. “So you live in permanent tension, in permanent self-censorship. And that’s how they control people.”

Kazantseva, who has published zines, blogs, and books about LGBTQ issues, has also experienced this firsthand. Despite having fled the country for Lithuania in 2023 due to crackdowns on anti-war advocacy, Russia’s financial monitoring system added her to their list of “terrorists and extremists” last October. This bans her from accessing Russian bank accounts, essentially locking her out of any financial activities in the country. The federal government has also placed her on their “wanted” list, and a court has ordered “arrest in absentia” of Kazantseva, meaning that she will be detained if she enters Russia or one of its allied countries.

Russian authorities have also threatened charges to pressure LGBTQ people into enlisting to fight in the war. In 2024, the government issued a new policy allowing defendants to be exempted from criminal liability if they join the army.

Ksenia, who requested that Uncloseted Media omit her surname for fear of not being allowed to return to the country, says she knew a boy who was part of a group chat for LGBTQ teenagers. When federal authorities discovered the chat, they threatened him with criminal convictions, and after significant pressure, he abandoned his plans to go to university and signed up to fight in Ukraine shortly after his 18th birthday.

“I know I should feel outrage at how defenseless he is facing the state machine,” Ksenia says. “But at this point, [I’m] just numb.”

These legal crackdowns have caused many LGBTQ people to withdraw from public life. In a 2025 study of 1,683 queer women by Olenichev and other Russian scholars, more than half of the respondents said extremism laws had made them afraid to contact law enforcement, 36.5 percent had gone back into the closet, and many have “severely restricted their circle of friends.”

Sometimes, taking these precautions isn’t enough. Sever’s club, which hosted drag performances, only allowed people who had not publicly come out as queer online to perform, and had to issue rules that performers could not touch or interact with the audience or mention the terms “LGBTQ” or “Ukraine.” They also had to remove wall paintings of humanoid cats wearing shibari rope and lingerie after getting fined by police in early 2024 under the propaganda law. None of that, though, was enough to save them from being raided.

How are advocates responding?

Zhenya, a Russian trans emigrant to Canada who asked to use a pseudonym because they still visit their home country, got hands-on experience with the new normal for queer activism when they signed up to volunteer for ComingOut.

Ksenia says the organization now relies almost entirely on workers outside of Russia like Zhenya. In order to start volunteering for the group, Zhenya had to go through a round of interviews designed to weed out infiltrators. And once they joined, they learned that all their coworkers’ identities would be hidden.

“Partially why they do interviews is because it’s known sometimes that police agents will try to insert themselves in the group to get names,” Zhenya told Uncloseted Media. “They never ask you for your passport info, they don’t ask you for your real name.”

Ksenia says ComingOut now has its security measures down to a science and “almost nothing” needed to change when they were declared an extremist organization. Because of that, they now offer security consultation to other organizations.

Another initiative that has needed to adapt to this new reality is Centre T, a trans and nonbinary support organization that will likely be declared an extremist group at a trial set for May 4. Sasha, the group’s media coordinator, says volunteers must use a VPN and communicate through encrypted messaging apps. Initially, this would often be Telegram, but with the Russian legislature weighing a ban on the app, they’re considering moving to other platforms like Matrix.

Even with these precautions, Centre T had to cut some programs: They no longer host online chats or dating programs, and they’ve mostly had to stop sharing personal stories in order to protect people’s identities. Still, their most crucial programs, which include assisting trans people in leaving the country and connecting them to medical specialists that aid them with transition under the table, are still operating.

Fleeing the country

Like with ComingOut, most of Centre T’s workers and volunteers have left Russia. Olenichev says this is generally the safest option. In many extremism cases, he says lawyers focus less on actually winning and more on fighting for lighter sentences and using stall tactics, like requesting extra documentation, to buy time for defendants to flee.

“It’s impossible to win those cases since [they] usually are political and not legal,” Olenichev says.

Sever is a success story for this strategy. After her arrest, she spent two months alone in a jail cell, isolated from her friends and family as they were scared that sending her letters would lead the government to target them. After she was released, she spent 11 months on house arrest, trapped at home with her “very religious” mother who tried to convince her to accept the charges and abandon her pansexuality.

“There were moments when my friends were visiting me while I was on house arrest, and they were later on [interrogated], so that led for them to stop. … It took a toll on me.”

As Olenichev and other advocates fought to prolong her case, she concocted a scheme to flee the country despite being under house arrest. When she came down with a disease, she was allowed to call an ambulance to the hospital, where her friends were waiting to help smuggle her over the border.

“I ended up in a safe place where I’m awaiting a visa to go to Europe, now,” says Sever, who did not reveal her location due to concerns about violence from local anti-LGBTQ groups.

Centre T is currently operating a temporary shelter in Armenia for trans people leaving Russia, providing food, housing and psychological and medical support. While they say they’ve recently lost U.S. grants and the ability to fundraise in Russia, the shelter remains open because of crowdfunding through Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee.

“We are funded by our community,” Sasha says. “It’s been really amazing, honestly … because it’s very difficult to find funding for direct service projects like a shelter.”

How do queer people continue to live in Russia?

Zhenya visited St. Petersburg for the first time since the extremism designation in the summer of 2024. Surprisingly, they still managed to find communities of queer people.

“I don’t think there’s anything official, it’s all where gay people just go, and you just know,” they say. “I went to one [such] place and that went just fine. I know a couple trans people who still live in St. Petersburg, and there’s still events and things happening, but it’s just way more lowkey.”

Zhenya says it’s easier to do this in bigger cities where they say people are relatively accepting and less likely to report LGBTQ people to the police.

Sasha believes that the community’s future lies in whisper networks like those Zhenya describes.

“It’s time for some decentralized, horizontal activities and initiatives,” she says. “Because it’s more safe right now to make a group only for friends, for people that you know.”

Sasha says it’s critical that queer Russians take precautions and strongly recommends ensuring no LGBTQ content is saved on your phone in case it gets hacked or confiscated.

In such dangerous conditions, Natalia Soloviova says every step is important. Seemingly simple actions, like opening up about your queer identity to trusted loved ones, covertly spreading information among other queer people, or simply allowing yourself to rest and recover are necessary to make it through.

“You’re keeping community alive,” she says. “If you’re supporting your friends, even with drinking mimosas on a Sunday after a really hard week, it’s keeping community safe, it’s spreading the words of community. Better to do something than not to do something.”

For herself, life goes on in New York. While she still misses Novosibirsk, she says she will continue to fight from abroad and is grateful that there are still so many queer Russians fighting to live safely.

“This urge of people who want to improve the life of our community can be unstoppable.”

As Congress finalizes its funding for fiscal year 2027, Republicans are attempting to include five anti-LGBTQ riders in the National Security and Department of State Appropriations Act.

A rider is an unrelated provision tacked onto a bill that must pass — in this instance, the bill provides funding for national security policy and for the State Department.

The riders range from restricting Pride flags in federal buildings to banning transgender healthcare, but all aim to limit the visibility and rights of LGBTQ Americans.

The five riders are:

Section 7067(a) prohibits Pride flags from being flown over federal buildings.

Section 7067(c) restricts the United States’ ability to appoint special envoys, representatives, or coordinators unless expressly authorized by Congress. These roles have historically been used to promote U.S. interests in international forums — including advancing human and LGBTQ and intersex rights and other policy priorities. The change would halt what the Congressional Equality Caucus describes as providing “critical expertise to U.S. foreign policy and leadership abroad.”

Section 7067(d) reinforces multiple anti-equality executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, effectively requiring that foreign assistance funded by the United States comply with those orders. This includes rescinding federal contractor nondiscrimination protections, including for LGBTQ people.

Section 7067(e) prohibits funding for any organization that provides or promotes medically necessary healthcare for trans people or “promotes transgenderism” — effectively banning funds for organizations that recognize trans people exist. This is despite the practice of gender-affirming care being supported by nearly every major medical association.

Section 7067(g) reinforces two global gag rules put forward by the Trump-Vance administration. One is the Trans Global Gag Rule, which prohibits foreign assistance funding for organizations that acknowledge the existence of trans people or advocate for nondiscrimination protections for them, among other activities. The second is the DEI Global Gag Rule, which prohibits foreign assistance funding for organizations that engage in efforts to address the ongoing effects of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry outside the United States.

The global gag rule has its roots in anti-abortion policy introduced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, when the 40th president barred foreign organizations receiving U.S. global health assistance from providing information, referrals, or services for legal abortion, or from advocating for access to abortion services in their own countries. Planned Parenthood notes that the policy also affects programs beyond abortion, including efforts to expand access to contraception, prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, combat malaria, and improve maternal and child health.

If organizations funded by the State Department engage in these activities, they could lose funding.

This anti-LGBTQ push aligns with broader actions from the Trump-Vance administration since the start of Trump’s second term, which have focused on restricting human rights — particularly those of trans Americans.

The House Appropriations Committee is responsible for drafting the appropriations legislation. U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) serves as chair, with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) as ranking member. The committee includes 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats.

For FY27 appropriations, Congress is supposed to pass and have the president sign the funding bills by Sept. 30, 2026.

Over the past days, I have been walking with a question that refuses to leave me. Not the kind of question you answer from a desk or from a distance, but one that grows out of what you witness in real time, at the gates, in the faces of those who remain there without knowing how any of this will end. What is truly happening inside the University of Puerto Rico, and why have so many students decided to risk everything at a moment when they can least afford to lose anything.

I write as someone who lives just steps away from the Río Piedras campus. These days, the silence has replaced the constant movement that once defined this space. The absence is felt in every corner where students used to pass at all hours. Since arriving in Puerto Rico three years ago, I have come to know firsthand stories that rarely make it into reports or official statements. One of the reasons I chose to stay was precisely this, to serve the university community, to help create a space where students could find something as basic as a safe meal at night and, in some way, ease burdens that are often carried in silence.

I have listened, asked questions, and tried to understand without imposing answers. What I have found is not a collective outburst or a generational whim. What exists is a fracture, a deep break between those making decisions and those living with their consequences every single day.

There has been an effort to reduce this strike to an issue of order, scheduling, or academic disruption. Conversations revolve around missed classes, delayed semesters, and students supposedly unaware of the consequences of their actions. What is rarely addressed are the conditions that lead an entire student body to pause its own future to sustain a protest that offers no guarantees.

Because that is the reality. These are students who fully understand what they are risking, and yet they remain. When someone reaches that point, the least they deserve is not judgment, but to be heard.

From the outside, there have also been attempts to discredit what is happening. Familiar narratives are repeated, legitimacy is questioned, and doubt is cast over intentions. It is easier to do that than to acknowledge that this did not begin at the gates, but long before, in decisions made without building trust.

And something must be said clearly. This is not limited to the gates of Río Piedras. What we are witnessing extends across every unit of the University of Puerto Rico system. Mayagüez, Ponce, Arecibo, Bayamón, Cayey, Humacao, Carolina, Aguadilla, Utuado, and the Medical Sciences Campus. This is not an isolated reaction. It is a movement that runs through the entire institution. Río Piedras may be more visible, but it is not alone. What is happening there reflects a broader unrest felt across the system.

Within that context, one demand has grown increasingly present, the call for the resignation of University of Puerto Rico President Zayira Jordán Conde. This is not the voice of a small group. It reflects a deeper level of mistrust that has spread across multiple campuses.

The Puerto Rican Association of University Professors has also made it clear that this is not solely a student issue. There is real concern among faculty, and a shared recognition of the conditions currently shaping the university. When students and professors arrive at the same conclusion, the problem can no longer be minimized.

Meanwhile, the administration continues to speak in the language of dialogue. But dialogue is not a word, it is a practice. And when trust has been broken, it cannot be restored through statements alone, but through decisions that prove a willingness to truly listen.

In the midst of all of this, there are voices that cannot be ignored. Voices grounded not in theory, but in lived experience. One of them is Joanna Cifredo, a student at the Mayagüez campus, a young Puerto Rican trans woman, and someone widely recognized for her advocacy.

I spoke with her in recent days. What follows is her voice, exactly as it is.

How would you describe what is happening inside the University of Puerto Rico right now, beyond what people see from the outside?

Estamos viviendo momentos muy difíciles, en el sentido de que hay mucha incertidumbre y una presión constante por parte de la administración para reabrir el recinto, pero, entre todo el caos e inestabilidad provocado por las decisiones de esta administración, también hemos vivido momentos muy poderosos. Esta lucha ha sacado lo mejor de nuestra comunidad.

Lo vimos en las asambleas y plenos, donde 1,500, 1,700, hasta 1,800 estudiantes llegaron —bajo lluvia, bajo advertencias de inundaciones— y aun así se quedaron, participaron y votaron a favor de una manifestación indefinida hasta que se atiendan nuestros reclamos.

He conocido a tantas personas en los diferentes portones, estudiantes graduados, aletas, estudiantes de intercambio, estudiantes de todo tipo de concentraciones y se unieron para apoyar el movimiento estudiantil. Estudiantes que vienen a los portones después del trabajo o antes de trabajar. Estudiantes que vienen a dejar agua y suministros entre turnos de trabajo. Viejitos que vienen a los portones con desayuno, almuerzo o cena.

Más allá de lo que se ve desde afuera, lo que estamos viviendo es una mezcla de tensión y resistencia, pero también de comunidad, solidaridad y compromiso colectivo.

Much of what is discussed remains at the level of headlines or social media. From your direct experience, what specific decisions or actions from the administration have led to this level of mobilization?

Desde el inicio, la designación de la Dra. Zayira Jordán Conde careció de respaldo dentro de la comunidad universitaria. No contaba con experiencia administrativa en la UPR ni con un conocimiento básico de nuestros procesos, cultura y reglamentos. Por eso, en asamblea, el estudiantado votó para solicitarle a la Junta de Gobierno que no considerara su candidatura, y múltiples organizaciones docentes hicieron lo mismo. Existía un consenso amplio de que no tenía la experiencia necesaria para liderar una institución como la nuestra.

A pesar de ese rechazo claro, la Junta de Gobierno decidió ignorar los reclamos de la comunidad universitaria e imponer su nombramiento.

Una vez en el cargo, su estilo de gobernanza ha sido poco transparente y poco colaborativo. Sin embargo, el detonante principal de la movilización en el Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez fue su decisión de destituir, de manera unilateral y en medio del semestre, a cinco rectores, incluyendo al nuestro, el Dr. Agustín Rullán Toro, para reemplazarlo por un rector interino, el Dr. Miguel Muñoz Muñoz.

Esta acción, tomada de forma abrupta, provocó de inmediato un clima de caos e inestabilidad dentro de la institución. Y deja una pregunta inevitable: ¿no anticipó el impacto de esa decisión, lo que evidenciaría una falta de experiencia? ¿O lo anticipó y aun así decidió proceder? No está claro cuál de las dos es más preocupante.

Además, esta decisión tuvo consecuencias concretas para el estudiantado, incluyendo el retiro de becas educativas para nuevos integrantes del RUM por parte de la Fundación Ceiba, que calificó la movida como “sorprendente” y “preocupante”. Decisiones impulsivas como la que tomó la presidenta ponen en peligro la estabilidad de nuestra institución y la acreditación de la universidad.

As a trans woman within this movement, how does your identity intersect with what is happening, and why does this also shape the future of people like you?

Soy una de varias chicas trans que formamos parte activa de este movimiento estudiantil.

For those outside the UPR who believe this does not affect them, what are the real consequences of this crisis?

La Universidad de Puerto Rico se fundó para servir al pueblo.

It is impossible to overstate the role the University of Puerto Rico and its students have played in shaping the social, cultural, and economic life of this country. Its impact extends into science, medicine, and every profession that has sustained Puerto Rico over time. No other educational institution has contributed more.

After listening to her, one thing becomes undeniable. This is not just another protest, but a generation refusing to let go of what little remains within its reach. And when a generation reaches that point, the issue is no longer the strike, the issue becomes the country itself.