Not only that, only 14% of Ukrainians support legalizing it. In Russia, it’s 9%. Both places are queerphobic as fuck, to a much greater extend than even the worst red states in the US, Russia is mostly just more mask-off about it than Ukraine. Still, Azov routinely attacked gay bars, there have been amnesty international reports about this since 2014 when the west started taking UA fascists under its wings. That pride parade can only happen in Kiew when it is walled off from the frothing, fascist mob is in part NATO’s fault. That assaults on queer people by azov nazis are practically never persecuted, that is at least partially due to their patronage from the west.

That is not to excuse the ridiculous amount of anti-queer sentiment in Russia. The hunting down of queer people under Ramzan Kadyrov in the Russian province of Chechnya was probably the worst act of homophobic violence since many decades, we’re talking about thousands of people getting murdered by government death squads who spied on them on dating sites. After the murders, Kadyrov joked in front of the international press why they were asking about a persecution of gay people, “there are no gay people in Chechnya.” It’s absolutely appalling. Oh, it also didn’t bother any of the western libs before the war.

But to paint Ukrainians as the defenders of gay rights, that’s ridiculous. I dread the prospect that this homophobic regime, led by an openly transphobic bastard like Zelensky, could very well become part of the EU soon.