Novaya Gazeta Europe published a report marking the second anniversary of the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to label the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization, describing how the idea of “treating” LGBTQ+ people is being normalized in Russia.
The paper notes that November 30 marks two years since that ruling. During that period, courts issued more than a hundred decisions over alleged participation in the “LGBT movement” or display of queer symbols. According to VTsIOM data from 2021, 23% of Russians still consider LGBTQ+ people “ill,” although the WHO removed homosexuality from its list of diseases in 1990 and transgender identity in 2019.
The report says officials, lawmakers and pro-government commentators have for years linked queer people with “perversion,” pedophilia and threats to the state. It cites statements by Vitaly Milonov, Tamara Pletneva, Maria Zakharova and Pyotr Tolstoy. The authors also point to decisions made in 2022–2023, including the legal pairing of LGBT “propaganda” with pedophilia and an order to create a structure at the Serbsky Center to study people with “disturbed gender self-identification.”
One of the people featured, teacher and blogger Nadya Mityagina, said that from the age of 15 she saw a psychologist who insisted her attraction to women was caused by trauma and could be “corrected.” According to Nadya, the sessions included exercises meant to create disgust toward same-sex relationships.
She said the psychologist told her to mentally associate kissing a woman with something revolting in order to produce aversion.
Another interviewee, transgender man Igor, spent 555 days in a closed “rehabilitation center.” After leaving, he said he had lost 30 kilograms and looked “like a person from a concentration camp.” Igor described the experience not as treatment, but as torment.
According to the investigative project Sistema, at least 12 organizations in Russia currently offer “treatment for homosexuality,” while rights advocates say there are more than 30 such structures. The report notes that the UN equates some forms of forced “treatment” of homosexuality with torture, yet in Russia, the newspaper writes, such practices effectively face no opposition from the state.