Europe
Berlin becomes refuge for LGBTQ Ukrainians
Dmitry Shapoval swam across river to flee Ukraine
BERLIN — Dmitry Shapoval is a 24-year-old gay man from Ukraine who lives with HIV.
He was working at an IT company’s call center and studying web and UX design in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in February when Russia launched its war against his country. Shapoval swam across a river and entered Poland less than a month later.
Shapoval now lives in Berlin with his cat Peach and has begun the process of resettling in Germany.
“I feel very secure here,” Shapoval told the Washington Blade on July 22 during an interview at Berlin’s Palais Populaire by Deutsche Bank on the city’s Unter den Linden boulevard.
Shapoval is one of the more than 900,000 Ukrainians who have arrived in Germany since the war began.
Ukrainians are able to enter Germany without a visa, and the German government provides those who have registered for residency a “basic income” that helps them pay for housing and other basic needs that include food. Ukrainian refugees can also receive access to German language classes, job training programs and childcare.
Anastasiia Baraniuk and her partner, Yulia Mulyukina, were living together Dnipro, a city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, when the war began.
Mulyukina, who is from Russia, was living in Moscow when she and Baraniuk began to talk online. Mulyukina traveled to Lviv in western Ukraine via Istanbul to meet Baraniuk, who is a Ukrainian citizen.
Mulyukina on July 22 told the Blade at Palais Populaire that she asked the Russian Embassy in Kyiv for help when the war began. Mulyukina said officials suggested that she “ask Ukraine what to do.”
“I was really shocked that my own country, with this idea of bringing peace, bringing quiet to Ukraine, just rejected me entirely,” she said in Russian as Shapoval translated.
Baraniuk, who also spoke with the Blade in Russian, said the Ukrainian government and a local NGO provided them with food and money.
The couple had planned to stay in Ukraine, but they decided to leave after Mulyukina “heard five explosions” while she was walking to a store. The two women’s friends gave them money to buy train tickets to Poland.
Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ and intersex rights organization, helped Baraniuk and Mulyukina and their cat enter Poland. They spent a week there before they arrived in Berlin on April 28.
Shapoval met them when they arrived at the train station.
Shapoval, Baraniuk and Mulyukina are among those who attended a reception that took place at the end of a two-day meeting the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration organized that took place in Berlin from July 21-22.
Activists from Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy and the U.S. attended the gathering that had a stated goal of starting “the conversation about long-term/mid-term needs and solutions for LGBTIQ Ukrainians and incite collaboration among stakeholders working with LGBTIQ Ukrainians and third-country nationals.”
“We were thrilled to bring together activists and human rights defenders from 10 countries and 20 organizations to develop medium and long-term strategies to support displaced LGBTIQ Ukrainians and third country nationals,” ORAM Executive Director Steve Roth told the Blade after the meeting. “All these organizations, including ORAM, have done an amazing job getting emergency support and services to LGBTIQ Ukrainians in need. As the war in Ukraine drags on, it’s more important than ever for organizations to coordinate efforts and plan for supporting longer term needs. This two-day roundtable in Berlin was a great step in that direction.”
ORAM has partnered with Airbnb.org and Alight (formerly known as the American Refugee Committee) to provide more than 1,000 nights of short-term housing to LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians and other displaced people in Germany and other countries in Europe. Shapoval, Baraniuk and Mulyukina are among those who live in such apartments.
Roth noted ORAM has begun to develop “a housing collective” for LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians in Berlin. He said ORAM rents the apartments in which the refugees can live for up to six months, “allowing them to register in Berlin, access social welfare and other services.”
“Safe and secure housing is one of the most urgent needs facing displaced LGBTIQ Ukrainians,” Roth told the Blade. “It’s an essential element in getting settled and rebuilding lives.”
Berlin Pride shows solidarity with Ukraine
The meeting ended a day before the annual Christopher Street Day parade took place in Berlin.
Baraniuk helped carry ORAM’s banner during the parade, while Mulyukina took pictures for the organization.
‘Stop Russian aggression’
Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson is one of LGBTQ and intersex activists from Ukraine who participated in the ORAM meeting and in the parade.
He told the Blade before the parade began that he took several trains from Kyiv to Poland before he flew to Berlin. Emson said the trip took two days.
“I understand that it is a safe ground, but I still have those flashbacks,” Emson told the Blade as he smoked a cigarette in front of a hotel near the parade staging area. “When you were sitting in the conference room and I saw something that reminds me of an air raid siren I was getting a panic attack. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a safe place.”
Emson also took issue with parade organizers’ opposition to war.
“Unfortunately, we as the Ukrainian community here (are) very disappointed with the motto that Berlin Pride put on the main stage: No war,” said Emson. “This doesn’t reflect the feelings that we have right now.”
“We would like to actually say it loud: Stop Russian aggression,” he added. “We need action right now. We need to stop it. We need to stop Russian aggression. We need to stop it right now.”
A group of marchers held a blue and yellow — the colors of Ukraine’s flag — banner that read “Arm Ukraine: Make Pride in Mariupol possible” while others simply carried the Ukrainian flag.
A man carried a homemade sign that read “Arm Ukraine: Make Pride in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizha, Kryvyi Rih possible again.” Viktoriya, a woman from northern Ukraine who is now pursuing her PhD in Berlin, held a cardboard poster that noted her homeland’s “queer soldiers are fighting for all of us.”
“I’m marching for both rights of queer people and rights of Ukrainians: The right to live and the right for love,” she said as she marched towards Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin.
Discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity was commonplace in Ukraine before the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year pledged his country would continue to fight anti-LGBTQ and anti-intersex discrimination after he met with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Shapoval, who is dating a man he met last October when he traveled to Berlin, told the Blade that he received “looks” in Kyiv if he wore a pink shirt.
He was wearing a pair of purple sneakers during the interview. Shapoval said he would not have been comfortable wearing them if he were still in Kyiv.
“For me it was even harder because I had misery in Ukraine because of homophobes,” he said. “Even the gay community is so toxic in Ukraine because it’s all about toxic masculinity and all of that … I also had some experiences where gays were like, ‘Oh my gosh just cut your hair and then we will get in touch with you.'”
Shapoval has begun the process of applying for German residency.
“I fell in love with the city right from the beginning,” he said. “I found friends here.”
Jessica Stern, the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, and others have noted transgender and gender non-conforming Ukrainians have not been able to leave the country because they cannot exempt themselves from military conscription. Another issue that LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians have faced as they attempt to resettle in another country is the lack of legal recognition of their relationships.
A marriage equality petition that Kyiv Pride submitted to Zelenskky on July 12 received more than 28,000 signatures, which is higher than the threshold that requires him to consider it. Ukrainian law requires Zelenskky to respond to it within 10 days of receiving it.
Baraniuk and Mulyukina hope to resettle in the U.S. and Canada, but are unable to legally prove they are in a relationship. The U.S. has a marriage-based immigration system for bi-national couples, while the Canadian system requires them to be married or “common-law partners.”
The U.S. has approved Baraniuk’s resettlement request, but denied Mulyukina.
They said the process to legally prove they are together is prohibitively expensive.”Right now we are looking for a way to get the proof that we are a couple,” said Baraniuk. “We don’t want to stay in Berlin.”
European Union
European Parliament resolution backs ‘full recognition of trans women as women’
Non-binding document outlines UN Commission on the Status of Women priorities
The European Parliament on Feb. 12 adopted a transgender-inclusive resolution ahead of next month’s U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meeting.
The resolution, which details the European Union’s priorities ahead of the meeting, specifically calls for “the full recognition of trans women as women.”
“Their inclusion is essential for the effectiveness of any gender-equality and anti-violence policies; call for recognition of and equal access for trans women to protection and support services,” reads the resolution that Erin in the Morning details.
The resolution, which is non-binding, passed by a 340-141 vote margin. Sixty-eight MPs abstained.
The commission will meet in New York from March 10-21.
A sweeping executive order that President Donald Trump signed shortly after he took office for a second time on Jan. 20, 2025, said the federal government’s “official policy” is “there are only two genders, male and female.” The Trump-Vance administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights, and dozens of other U.N. entities.
Russia
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown takes absurd turn
Authorities targeted one of the country’s largest bookstore chains last month
While MAGA continues to attack LGBTQ rights in the U.S. — including erasing queer history and removing children’s books with LGBTQ characters from libraries and pushing an ever‑broader censorship agenda — and as the UK faces MAGA‑inspired campaigns demanding the removal of LGBT literature from public libraries, Russia’s assault on LGBTQ‑related media has taken an extreme and frankly absurd turn. It is a cautionary tale for Western countries of just how far censorship can go once it becomes normalized. From books to anime, TV shows, and even academia, queer existence is being systematically erased.
In January, one of Russia’s largest private bookstore chains, Chitai‑Gorod-Bukvoed, faced the risk of being shut down over alleged “LGBT propaganda” under a law that prohibits any positive mention of LGBTQ content and equates LGBTQ material with pornography and pedophilia.
Among the books targeted were “Beartown,” “Us Against You,”and “The Winners”by Fredrik Backman, “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” by John Boyne.
According to Chitai‑Gorod-Bukvoed CEO Alexander Brychkin, once it became known in mid‑December that law enforcement agencies had launched inspections, the Chitai‑Gorod–Bukvoed network immediately removed these titles from sale nationwide. In a comment to Kommersant, Brychkin stressed that the chain “operates strictly within the legal framework,” noting that the books were not listed in any official register of banned materials at the time the inspections began and had been on sale for several years.
Previously, two of the biggest online film distribution companies were charged as well under the “LGBT Propaganda law.”
Private businesses had no more right to speak up than writers or artists who are persecuted for their work. This is a nightmare scenario for many Americans who believe the free market itself can protect freedom of expression. This is the reality of modern‑day Russia.
A censored version of the anime “Steins;Gate” has also been released on Russia’s most prominent streaming platform, “Kinopoisk,” in which the storyline of one of the main characters was altered due to the ban on so‑called “LGBT propaganda,” as reported by opposition outlets Verstka and Dozhd, as well as fans on Reddit.
In the original series, the character Ruka Urushibara is a young person with an androgynous appearance who struggles to accept themself in a male body — an obvious indication that Ruka is a transgender girl. Ruka wears women’s clothing and dreams of becoming a girl. In episode eight, Ruka is given the chance to intervene in the past by sending a message to their mother in order to be born female.
In the Kinopoisk version, released in late 2025, Ruka is instead portrayed as a girl living with HIV — something entirely absent from the original anime and invented in translation. The storyline and dialogue were rewritten accordingly, completely distorting the original meaning: in this version, Ruka attempts to change the past in order to be born “healthy,” without HIV, rather than to be born a girl. This is not only absurd, but deeply offensive to the LGBTQ community, which has long been stigmatized in relation to HIV.
A similar distortion appears in “Amediateka”’s translation — or, better to say, rewriting — of the new AMC series “Interview with the Vampire.” Translators rewrote dialogue in ways that fundamentally misrepresented the plot, downplaying the openly queer nature of the characters to the point that romantic partners were translated merely as “friends” or “pals,” rendering entire scenes meaningless. At the same time, even brief critical references to Russian or Soviet politics were removed.
As for queer romance, such as the popular Canadian TV show “Heated Rivalry,”it has no official Russian translation at all and circulates only through fan translations. The show remains popular among millennials and Gen Z, and Russian social media platforms like X (Twitter) and Instagram are full of positive reviews. Yet, in theory, promoting such a show could put someone at risk under the law. People still watch it, still love it, still build fan communities, but it all exists quietly, pushed under the carpet.
The prohibition is not total, but it is a grotesque situation when even such a nice and harmless show is stigmatized.
Books suffer even more. Some classics fall under bans, and books are physically destroyed. In other cases, the outcome is worse: texts are rewritten and censored, as with “Steins;Gate.” This affects not only fiction but also nonfiction. For example, in “Deep Color” by Keith Recker, an American researcher of visual arts, all mentions of queer, feminism or BDSM culture were erased in the Russian edition. Even historically necessary references were removed, including mentions of the pink triangle used by the Nazis.
In the Russian edition of Skye Cleary’s “The Thirst for Authenticity: How Simone de Beauvoir’s Ideas Help You Become Yourself,” dozens of paragraphs were blacked out. Passages discussing the fluidity of gender and a person’s right to define themselves outside the rigid male–female binary were removed. Sections on contraception and abortion, critiques of biological reductionism and social pressure on women, details of Simone de Beauvoir’s intimate life and her relationships with women, as well as reflections on non‑monogamous relationships, were all excised. Even footnotes referencing quotes about gender identity were hidden.
Those two books are one of the many examples of the fate of Russian-translated nonfiction. Actually, even books about animal reproduction were demanded to be censored because of the “LGBT propaganda law”. Apparently, the authorities couldn’t accept a neutral scientific description of same-sex behavior and reproductive diversity in animals.
The authorities know what they are doing. Most people are less likely to read dense nonfiction or search actual studies about animal sexual behavior than to watch a popular TV show about queer hockey players, which makes visual media easier to censor quietly and effectively. So they really could show LGBTQ as something negative and absolutely unnatural for most of the Russian population.
And this is the core of the problem. This is not just censorship of content — it is the rewriting of history, even the narrative around biology. It is the deliberate marginalization of queer existence, the systematic erasure of queer people’s ability to see themselves reflected in culture, literature, and art.
The U.S. still retains independence in academia, publishing, and private business when it comes to queer voices. Russia does not. History shows where this path leads: Nazi Germany burned books; the Taliban destroyed cultural and historical materials. This is always one of the first steps toward genocide — not immediate, perhaps, but inevitable once dehumanization becomes official policy. It never stops with just one group. In Russia, immigrants, people from the North Caucasus and Central Asia, Ukrainians, and even disabled citizens face daily dehumanization — it’s all part of the same system.
And now, alarmingly, the U.S. seems to be following in Russia’s footsteps — the same path that enabled war in Ukraine and the thriving of authoritarianism.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
LGBTQ activists mourn the Rev. Jesse Jackson
Trump falsely links trans people to terrorism
Fellow lawmakers praise Adam Ebbin after Va. Senate farewell address
LGBTQ groups question US health agreements with African countries
European Parliament resolution backs ‘full recognition of trans women as women’
FOIA lawsuit filed against State Department for PEPFAR records
Trans sports bans rooted in eugenics
Trans students not included in new India University Grants Commission equity rules
Pride flag raised at Stonewall after National Park Service took it down
Calendar: February 13-19
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State Department4 days agoFOIA lawsuit filed against State Department for PEPFAR records
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Opinions5 days ago
Trans sports bans rooted in eugenics
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India4 days ago
Trans students not included in new India University Grants Commission equity rules
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New York4 days ago
Pride flag raised at Stonewall after National Park Service took it down
