World
‘I love Ukraine’
Country’s activists remain defiant as they mark war’s first anniversary
Anna Sharyhina, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, a group that promotes LGBTQ and intersex rights in Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022, led a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.
Kharkiv Pride took place during the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive against Russian troops in Kharkiv Oblast. Sphere Fundraising Manager Ruslana Hnatchenko on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during a Zoom interview the subway was the only safe place for the event to happen, but she said it was “very important for us to have it in Ukraine and have it in Kharkiv.”
“Kharkiv carries a significance of being at the frontline and it is so close to Russia,” said Hnatchenko. “It was great to have it there.”
Friday marks one year since Russia launched its war against Ukraine.
Dmitry Shapoval, a gay man with HIV from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Anastasiia Baraniuk and her partner, Yulia Mulyukina, who were living together from Dniptro, a city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, are among the millions of people who have left Ukraine over the last year.
Hnatchenko was in Budapest, Hungary, studying for her master’s degree when the war began, and she spoke with the Blade from there. She visited her family over the Christmas holidays, but they met in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland, because it was safer than Kharkiv.
“It was unsafe for me to come to Kharkiv,” said Hnatchenko. “It would be better for everyone to meet in the west.”
A Russian airstrike on March 1, 2022, killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law school student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. Schemur was volunteering inside Kharkiv’s regional administration building when she was killed.
Hnatchenko said activists in Kherson, a city that Ukrainian forces liberated last November, told her Russian soldiers “were aware of where people from vulnerable groups (LGBTQ and intersex people and Roma people) lived.” Hnatchenko told the Blade people who identified as LGBTQ, intersex or nonbinary did not go outside during the occupation because they were afraid of being forcibly conscripted, attacked or sexually assaulted.
“A lot of LGBT people just tried not to go outside … and obviously not to expose anything about their identity,” she said.
Hnatchenko also told the Blade women and girls in Kherson tried to dress in a “non-attractive way” in order “to make themselves look ugly, so the troops would take less interest in them.”
‘We help our soldiers’
Activists and advocacy groups remain defiant. They also continue to support LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians who remain inside the country and servicemembers.
Hnatchenko said Sphere has provided humanitarian assistance and psychological support to more than 1,500 people.
Outright International, RFSL (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights), Hivos and private donors inside Ukraine and elsewhere have donated funds that have allowed Sphere to purchase generators, clothes and blankets that it has distributed to Kharkiv’s LGBTQ and intersex residents during blackouts that Russia’s attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure have caused.
The U.S. Agency for International Development and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief over the last year have delivered millions of doses of antiretroviral drugs for Ukrainians with HIV/AIDS. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson last month during a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted Ukrainian LGBTQ and intersex servicemembers noted the organization continues to purchase basic supplies for them.
“We buy shoes. We buy underwear. We buy socks. We buy heaters,” said Emson. “We help our soldiers.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the last year has indicated his support of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
Zelenskyy last summer said he supports a civil partnerships law for same-sex couples.
Ukrainian lawmakers late last year unanimously approved a media regulation bill that will ban hate speech and incitement based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The measure passed days before Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian, met with President Joe Biden at the White House and addressed Congress.
Zelenskyy last month made a broad reference to LGBTQ and intersex rights in a virtual Golden Globes appearance. Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova during the Jan. 26 event in D.C. applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
Biden on Feb. 20 met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
Hnatchenko told the Blade she thinks Zelenskyy “does believe in human rights.”
“Maybe he’s not a full-blown ally, yet, but I think he believes in human rights,” she said, while noting she was sharing her personal thoughts about Zelenskyy. “He’s not only doing that because of the pressure from partners, but there’s pressure from within Ukraine to not do that.”
Hnatchenko further acknowledged conservative politicians, prominent figures within the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches and many Ukrainians themselves remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights.
“He (Zelenskyy) is kind of between a rock and a hard place in that sense, but I believe that human rights in Ukraine will overcome, especially after our victory,” said Hnatchenko. “We will make progress.”
Helen Globa, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians, on March 2, 2022, left her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. She lived in New York with her son, Bogdan Globa, and his husband until she returned to Ukraine last August.
Helen Globa, like Hnatchenko, acknowledged many Ukrainians remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights, but she said Zelenskyy’s support of civil unions for same-sex couples and LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians in the country’s armed forces are two tangible results of activists’ work in the country. Helen Globa also said one of the reasons she decided to return to Ukraine was to continue her support of these efforts.
“I love Ukraine and my life, my activities,” she told the Blade on Wednesday. “I do believe in our victory and further opportunities to finish my LGBTQ human rights activities by pushing our government to adopt same-sex partnership and marriages.”
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a transgender woman from Las Vegas who enlisted in the Ukrainian military after she covered the war, echoed Helen Globa.
“This act of war by Putin has set in motion a timely and irreversible civil rights movement in Ukraine, one that has been extraordinarily beneficial to the LGBTQ community,” Ashton-Cirillo told the Blade on Tuesday from the frontlines where she is fighting with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Brigade in the Donbas. “From hundreds of openly queer men and women serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to President Zelenskyy’s positive statement about civil partnerships and human rights as applied to the community, what Putin has done has allowed freedom to bloom in Ukraine.”
Netherlands
Tens of thousands take part in World Pride March
Event capped off two weeks of celebrations in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM — Tens of thousands of people on Saturday participated in the World Pride March in Amsterdam.
Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin and Paolo Rondelli, who in 2022 became the world’s first openly gay head of state when he became Captain Regent of San Marino, are among those who participated alongside Massachusetts state Rep. Jack Lewis and Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Ukraine, and others.
Members of D66, the centrist Dutch political party that Prime Minister Rob Jetten heads, also marched.
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister. He participated in the opening of the World Pride Human Rights Conference on Aug. 5 and spoke on a panel with Rondelli, former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, and other gay and lesbian current and former heads of government.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The march took place a week after hundreds of thousands of people lined Amsterdam’s canals for the city’s annual Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
A terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day on July 25 left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured.
The incident overshadowed World Pride, which began hours earlier and ended on Saturday.
Dutch authorities increased security measures in the aftermath of the July 25 attack. No incidents were reported during World Pride.
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.
Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”
Boris Dittrich, the Dutch Senate’s First Vice President and a member of Jetten’s D66 party who was previously global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s LGBTQ Rights Program, at the end of the panel asked about protecting intersex babies from what advocates maintain are unnecessary surgeries.
Netherlands
Dutch prime minister opens World Pride Human Rights Conference
Rob Jetten is country’s first openly gay head of government
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key are on assignment in Amsterdam through Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Wednesday opened the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam.
Jetten — who in February became the country’s first openly gay prime minister — began his remarks with an acknowledgment that the July 25 terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day that left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured “filled me with anger and sorrow.”
He started to speak after a group of activists began to shout at him over his government’s position on Palestine — the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders in connection with crimes against humanity it says they committed in the Gaza Strip and Israel after Oct. 7.
Jetten stood silently and allowed them to protest before security personnel removed them from the room.
View on Threads
Jetten in his speech acknowledged this year marks 25 years since the Netherlands became the first country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. He also pointed out 2025 marks Amsterdam Pride’s Canal Parade‘s 30th year.
“More and more in recent years, we’ve seen hard won progress being eroded,” conceded Jetten. “We’ve seen countries backsliding in equal rights legislation. We’ve seen homophobic hate speech becoming more overt and aggressive, and not only out in the real world, but online as well.”
Jetten pointed out “online hatred is one of the biggest threats facing the LGBTQIA+ people today.”
“All around the world … misinformation and disinformation can be spread in the blink of an eye with a single mouse click, reaching much further and much faster than NGOs, youth workers and health organizations can,” he said. “This is always how hatred takes hold. First in the shadows, outside the spotlight of society, underestimated by everyone, until, having grown into a many headed monster, it crawls out of the darkness.”
Jetten said his government this fall will launch “a social dialog on online discrimination and offering specific guidance on action to take.” This will include “training courses for municipalities and civil society organizations to help them deal with online hate speech.”
His government over the next three years will invest €7.5 million each year “in improving the safety of the queer community in our cities with an alliance of organizations committed to safety, both in the public space and in the workspace for LGBTQI+ people, and with a public information campaign to combat discrimination and disinformation.” Jetten also said the government will promote a campaign in Dutch schools that encourages students and teachers to wear purple as a way to show their support for the LGBTQ community.
’Equal rights are not a Western agenda’
Jetten in his speech also singled out “conservative forces” in Uganda, Senegal, and in other countries who are framing LGBTQ rights “developments as a neocolonial Western agenda.”
“Under the pretense of resisting so-called Western moral decadence, horrendous laws are enacted and promoted, laws that put the rights of free people under severe pressure,” he said. “But in reality, many communities in these countries have a long history of diversity and freedom, and the laws that impose the restrictions were in fact put in place by the colonial powers.”
“No matter how hard those conservative forces try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, queer communities around the world know that equal rights are not a Western agenda,” added Jetten. “They are first and foremost a human agenda.”
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and Nayyab Ali, co-chair of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Alliance Pakistan, are among those who also spoke on Wednesday. Lady Phyll, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and Camiel Welling, supervisor of the Amsterdam Trans Clinic, are co-hosting the conference that ends Friday.
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