Less than a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US sent a letter to the UN, warning that Russia has formulated a “kill list” of people to attack, murder and/or detain in camps “if” it invades the country.
“There will be an even greater form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies,” Jack Sullivan, White House national security adviser, said to NBC. “It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them. And that is what we laid out in detail for the U.N.”
The US informed the UN about intelligence regarding the list while the Russian government was repeatedly saying it didn’t plan to invade Ukraine. Since then, as we know, it has. The list is reminiscent of the Taliban’s LGBT kill lists when taking over Afghanistan. The Taliban, like Russia and the invasion, denied such things would happen.
The Russian list includes journalists, ethnic and religious minorities, activists and LGBT Ukrainians. News that US Olympic basketballer and lesbian, Brittney Griner, was detained in Russia due to drug charges around the same time the US informed the UN about the list is frightening to say the least. Are the events connected?
Putin attempts to justify the invasion on grounds of denazification, which he ironically interprets to mean resistance to his control or regime. This includes The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which he insists Ukraine doesn’t join.
Ukraine had hoped Putin would stick to his word about not invading Ukraine. “Most Ukrainians don’t think Russia will invade,” NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported from Kyiv at the time. “They think it would be catastrophic not only for Ukraine, but also for President Putin and Russia. And instead, they see this kind of pressure in what’s happening in the East and all of these troops as a way to continue to damage the country, and pressure [it] to align with Russia instead of the West. The West is really where most people here see their nation’s future.”
Now that Putin has invaded, LGBT Ukrainians aren’t laying down. Despite fearing they’re on the kill list, many LGBT people have remained in the country to fight Russian soldiers. In fact, LGBT Ukrainians already fought and captured some.
“I know a lot of LGBT people who go to our army now,” Jul Sirous, the volunteer coordinator of KyivPride, said to the Daily Beast. “They try to fight and it’s also our main message that we try to be one united nation and we try to do everything to make sure that Russia will be defeated.”
“The main fear at this moment is that if they will be successful, that we lose everything that we have…Unfortunately, if this city will be occupied like other cities [in Ukraine], then there will be some persecution against LGBT people.”
