Timofey Sozaev left Russia in September 2019. After nearly 20 years as an LGBTQ+ rights activist, cofounding several organizations, he found out, while visiting friends in the United States, that the Kremlin had become aware of his advocacy work. He didn’t go back.
It wasn’t an easy decision. Sozaev knew that not returning would mean “handing over everything that I love and that is valuable to me to the enemy: obscurantist homophobes, an inhuman political regime that will stop at nothing.” Still, while he was in the US, he realized he was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, hypervigilance, problems sleeping, poor concentration.
They got worse as the day of his scheduled return approached. “My psyche and body just told me ‘no,’” he says. He applied for asylum.
Five years later, life for LGBTQ+ Russians is even more harrowing than it was when Sozaev left. Over the past decade, building on the anti-“gay propaganda” laws that had targeted Sozaev, President Vladimir Putin has imposed further restrictions on the freedoms of queer citizens, citing a desire to return the country to “traditional family values.” Last year, Russia enacted a law banning gender-affirming care .
In March, the government added the “LGBT movement ” to its list of extremist and terrorist organizations. It represents, says Ksen Pallegedara Murry, an Oregon-based family law attorney who works with LGBTQ+ clients and Russian immigrants, a “direct gov.