ABOVE: The Christopher Street Day 2022 sign in Berlin. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
This is a decisive moment for Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been torn from their families and forcibly taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territories, where they are given away for adoption to pro-Putin families. While the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has declared this a form of genocide, the Trump administration is trying to pressure Ukrainian President Zelensky into accepting a peace deal that sacrifices Ukraine’s interests. In the process, it seemed like the fate of kidnapped Ukrainian children was being ignored. The Yale University program that played an important role in tracking abducted children was cut off by the current U.S. administration, along with many other humanitarian initiatives.
Meanwhile, Russia has created a special “adoption” website where children are advertised like possessions for prospective “parents.” The site lists their temperament (“obedient” and “calm”), their appearance (so racist adopters won’t get a Black or Jewish child), their eye color. But what is missing is any mention of the child’s personality, their unwillingness to leave their home, or the fact that some of these children are almost certainly LGBTQ, simply based on statistical probability.
The treatment these children face raises serious concerns, especially for LGBTQ children and teenagers taken from more queer-friendly Ukraine into a country where LGBTQ people are actively persecuted. The Washington Blade spoke with people from Ukraine to better understand the situation, and it turned out to be far more complex, involving not only occupation forces but also family abuse and ideological brainwashing.
The Blade spoke with Rachael, a transgender woman currently living in the Russian-occupied Donbas region.
In Russia, transitioning for trans people is now completely prohibited, regardless of age — raising additional concerns for the fate of trans youth. Some children and teenagers from Donbas have been sent to Russia, while minors from other Ukrainian territories have also been sent to occupied Donbas.
Rachael began by explaining the kind of people who now control the region.
“During my childhood, I was a gender-nonconforming child and had various neuropsychological conditions,” she told the Blade. “I was subjected to sexual harassment by male classmates. On one occasion, older students attempted to force me into a basement. Luckily, I was able to break free and escape. Once I was hiding in a manhole — not an active sewer, but a bunker-like space with an entrance resembling a hatch. A group of boys found me and threatened to pee on me. I grabbed a big stick, and they ran off, scared they’d hurt their genitals. Most of them were typical Donetsk street thugs (“gopota”), and later they joined the so-called People’s Militia of Donbas. Almost all of the Donbas militia is made up of people like them.”
The militia is effectively the local police. Naturally, queer children cannot expect protection from them if their “adoptive” families abuse them.
But, as Rachael explained, the threat does not come only from adoptive families. Biological transphobic and queerphobic parents can also use the situation to their advantage, since Ukrainian law prohibits queerphobic abuse.
“There is a huge probability that some transphobic and homophobic parents deliberately send their kids to Russia,” Rachael told the Blade. “It became part of a conversion therapy. I mean, I know a case when parents pumped a trans child with neuroleptics to make them almost incapacitated, causing serious problems, but supposedly ‘curing’ their queerness. Now those parents have another ‘option’ — they can send kids to ‘patriotic programs’ in Russia, so the kids will be “disciplined” and “cured.” They don’t care that those kids are more likely to be sent to the front lines to fight other Ukrainians a few years later.”
And this is perhaps the most chilling fact — something many human rights groups overlook: some Ukrainian parents, already brainwashed by Russian propaganda before the war, would truly rather see their child dead than queer. The war simply “legalized” that choice for them.
“Of course, there are conservative, anti-LGBT tendencies all around the world, including in Western Ukraine,” she said. “But in the east, Russian propaganda is very strong: before the war, when I was a teenager, I supported Russia. If I had been taken back then, I would have supported Russian programs, despite the abuse from pro-Russian thugs.”
Some LGBTQ people in Donbas continue to support Russia even now, after the country officially recognized the “LGBT movement” as extremist and completely prohibited gender transition.
“Those queers think that Russia is stronger than Ukraine, so it’s better to be on the Russian side, despite rape and queerphobic abuse in the Russian army. Some queer boys think they’ll become the next Harvey Milk for Russia, because Harvey Milk served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War,” said Rachael. “They imagine themselves not just as bohemian queers, but as fighters for Russia. They think they’ll earn their place in the new country.”
In reality, they are often subjected to violence from fellow soldiers and used as cannon fodder — usually killed in the first assaults. But they don’t see the truth behind the “nice picture.”
“It’s not just about fear. They genuinely try to believe in Russia — just like many Muslim youth who joined ISIS were brainwashed into believing they were going to a better life, even though they were used as cannon fodder. Those Muslim youth believed in ‘global Islamic ideas’; those in Donbas believed in a ‘global Russian world.’ It’s essentially the same problem,” said Rachael.
Propaganda is one of the most powerful weapons in this war. This is why it is crucial to rescue young Ukrainian children from it, and why queer Ukrainian children need to be found before they learn to hate themselves or are manipulated and exploited.
The Blade also spoke with a Ukrainian lawyer and LGBTQ ally, who preferred to remain anonymous, about the legal aspects of the situation.
“As a Ukrainian lawyer, I must emphasize that the forced transfer and ‘adoption’ of Ukrainian LGBT — especially transgender — children to Russia is both unlawful and uniquely dangerous,” he told the Blade. “Beyond breaching international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these minors are placed in a system that criminalizes LGBT visibility and labels the ‘LGBT movement’ as extremist, enabling surveillance, harassment, and coercive ‘correction.’”
The rights of trans children raise specific concerns.
“For trans teenagers, legal gender recognition and gender-affirming care are effectively banned, so misgendering, denial of appropriate healthcare, and exposure to conversion practices are foreseeable — and harmful — outcomes,” the lawyer continued. “In any negotiations, the only rights-compliant baseline is rapid family tracing, safe return to Ukraine, and independent monitoring to guarantee these children can live safely and be themselves.”
Failing to act now could mean allowing an entire generation to be erased.
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