Transplantation surgery is now banned in Russia and President Vladimir V. Transgender people are subject to other restrictions under a tough new law signed by Putin on Monday.
Apart from banning surgery and hormone therapy, the law prohibits changing gender in official documents such as passports, annuls any marriage where a spouse changes gender, and prohibits adoption by such couples. It’s the latest step in an ongoing crackdown on LGBTQ freedoms in Russia, including a law passed in December against depictions of the gay lifestyle — what the government calls “homosexual propaganda.”
Russian officials, who supported the new law targeting transgender people, portrayed it as another step by the country to assert traditional values - a position Moscow has increasingly embraced by characterizing the war in Ukraine as a fight against Western powers.
“We have our Russian families, and the liberalization of such phenomena could be the first step on the road to hell,” said Badma Bashenkaev, chairman of the State Duma committee on health care, when the ban was unanimously passed in the lower house of parliament on July 14.
Since the 1970s, the Soviet Union has maintained a fairly progressive attitude toward such operations, guided by government-organized panels of medical experts. But in the wake of repeated setbacks since a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kremlin officials have sought to use the new laws to bolster support domestically and internationally from people who oppose basic rights for minority groups, analysts said.
“The transgender ban is exactly such a maneuver, it resonates with people in order to rally support for war and other issues,” said Alexander Kondakov, a Russian sociologist who teaches at University College Dublin in Ireland.
Since Russia enacted its law last December against depictions of the gay lifestyle, the country has seen a rise in both court cases against homosexuals and violence targeting them, analysts said. The new law, he said, would feed into those trends.
