With all the international media in Moscow for the World Cup, I reasoned that this was the ideal moment to stage a protest that would secure worldwide coverage of the victimisation of Russian and, in particular, Chechen LGBT+ people. My hope was that this publicity might embarrass the authorities in Moscow and the Chechen capital, Grozny, and prompt them to ease their homophobic repression.
Already, there is evidence that past adverse publicity about anti-gay witch hunts has constrained the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. The homophobic “pogroms” there are not as severe as they were last year.
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