Image made with OpenAI.com. In light of the horrific never-ending news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it seems that nothing else of importance is going on in the region. Thus new legislation that is literally life-threatening for Russian LGBTQ+ people, which is going to be passed by the Russian parliament on October 27, 2022, has been given little coverage in the international media. However, as previous academic research shows, when the initial law on “Propaganda of LGBTQ+ people to minors” was passed in 2013, attacks on the LGBTQ+ community increased. Now, there is no doubt the Russian parliament will pass a new law prohibiting the spread of “propaganda” of LGBTQ+ and “pedophilia” to all age groups, including people over 18. How will this impact this already vulnerable community in an increasingly repressive dictatorship? At the first glance, the main threat is to publishers, who actually sent a letter asking to explain the bill, and to online and offline cinemas, TV, theatres, media (for those outlets which are not yet blocked inside Russia). They will have to be “more careful” in choosing what to write, broadcast and perform, according to the proposed law. Because the law also includes provisions for prohibiting pedophilia propaganda, the publishers asked: “Would Dostoevsky’s scenes in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ be considered propaganda of pedophilia? Would Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ be such?” Yet they received a very vague answer from Alexander Khinshtein, one of the authors of the new law. Sveta Lukyanova, writer, editor, and cofounder of WLAG Russia, a writing courses created for women, told Global Voices: We are a collective of women writers, and I am also leading writing courses. Among the stories we write, we do have a lot which mention LGBTIQ. I also myself identify as queer. After they passed the law on propaganda to minors [in 2013], we had to adjust but still had possibilities to work and publish, although we had to mark our stories with 18+. I also did not accept teenagers to any of my courses, although a lot of them wanted to learn how to write. But now, with the adaption of this new law, I feel like we are being shown to the door. However, not all of us can emigrate and leave Russia. The city where I live, it is my home, I built a life and a career here from zero. Now, I feel that all of us are not safe anymore, that everything is falling apart. I feel helpless. I feel like they want to close the closet, you know? We do not want to go back to the closet. The closet has to be destroyed.” Others contacted by Global Voices express their opinion in even more drastic terms. Vanya Solovey, gender researcher, associated member at the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin, believes that, beyond prohibiting artistic and performative depictions of the LGBTQ+ community, the main impact of the law will be further marginalizing the community in Russian society and cementing the perception of them as an “outsider group” of “abnormal” citizens. As he elaborates: I believe that if the new law on LGBTIQ propaganda is to work at all, then it will be primarily on a discursive, symbolic level. It might make it even harder for LGBTIQ organizations to operate, although it is already extremely difficult. Yet if we think back to the first law that banned propaganda among minors, it was applied very selectively. Its main impact was discursive: it legitimized homophobic and transphobic discrimination and violence. Studies have shown that, after it was adopted, violent hate crimes against LGBTIQ surged. This is what such laws do: not so much punishing ‘propaganda’ but rather declaring political homophobia and transphobia as part of the state ideology and giving free reign to those who wish to attack LGBTIQ people. On a more general level, I believe the new law has a lot to do with the current Russo–Ukrainian war. The Russian state is in deep crisis; it is barely functioning. For MPs to discuss further repression against LGBTIQ people now seems just as absurd a show as that despicable concert on the Red Square to celebrate the annexation of Ukrainian territories. The system is trying very hard to make it seem like it's still working, but it is clearly not. In the end, I think there is a good chance that the law won't be implemented at all. After the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the financing of all Russian NGOs has drastically decreased. Many of them cannot receive donations from abroad any more due to sanctions in the banking and financial industry and foreign agent legislation. The most recent prohibitions on cryptocurrencies have stopped the last droplets of foreign funding.