Chechen security forces accused of forcing detained gay men to fight in Ukraine

The security forces in Chechnya are forcing gay men they have detained to enlist to fight in Ukraine, according to North Caucasus SOS Crisis Group, an organisation devoted to helping LGBTQ+ people in the Muslim-majority republic.

Human rights activists say that they know of at least seven gay people from Chechnya who have been sent to the front, one of whom subsequently died, according to the organisation, which cited data showing that the Chechen authorities had begun forcibly sending queer people to fight in Ukraine even before the Russian government’s announcement of mobilisation on 21 September 2022.

Six gay men were apparently detained in early September 2022 solely on suspicion of being homosexual, after which they were allegedly threatened with fabricated criminal charges and told that they would be transferred to a pretrial detention centre where their cellmates would be told about their sexual orientation.

To avoid such a fate, the detained men were reportedly offered the chance to either pay a bribe of 1.5 million rubles (€15,120) to have the charges dropped, or to enlist to fight in Ukraine. Three people were recruited to fight in Ukraine because their families couldn’t afford the ransom, the SOS group said.

According to human rights activists, similar arrests of members of the LGBTQ+ community in the North Caucasus continued in earnest throughout 2023, when in one of the raids several queer people were detained, both men and women. The women were handed over to their families, while the four men were forced to sign a contract with the Russian military.

One of the men sent to the front has been killed, according to the group’s sources, while the fate of the other six is unknown.

The Russian Supreme Court declared the “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organisation” in May, prompting a series of arrests throughout the country. Russia’s North Caucasus republics have a long history of homophobic violence and persecution of queer people.