Vladimir Putin has mentioned “gender freedoms” more than once to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine and simultaneously repress its own citizens.

More directly, he alleged that Russian citizens who seek “gender freedom” (alongside foie gras and oysters) are part of the anti-Russian “fifth column.”

Gender and sexual freedoms – or rights, as they are more commonly known – are about bodily autonomy, diversity and inclusivity. Feminist and LGBTQ+ activists argue that every human being deserves respect, recognition and equal rights, regardless of gender or sexuality.

What is the connection between Putin’s animosity towards Ukraine and gender and sexual rights in Russia and around the world?

Putin’s gender and diet

Putin’s regime has increasingly relied on very conventional sexual and gender norms.

When he rose to the presidency, image makers used Putin’s KGB background and penchant for fitness to portray him as a macho strongman who could reverse Russia’s waning power and ‘re-masculinize’ the country after a decade of supposed geopolitical flaccidity in the wake of the Soviet collapse.

In other words, an inflexible and clearly patriarchal notion of masculinity has been central to the legitimacy of Putin’s regime.

Russian foreign policy has also relied on rigid gender norms. When Ukraine experienced its first pro-democracy revolution in 2004, Russian media questioned the masculinity of its leaders.

Putin also used homophobic terms to dismiss Georgia’s 2003 Pink Revolution, responding to a reporter’s question by saying, “A pink revolution – then they’ll come up with a light blue one.” In Russian, “light blue” or goluboi is slang for “gay man”.

Gender and constituency appeal

Putin has often been depicted as the undisputed leader of Russia’s power hound – an image focused on masculinity.

However, even as the leader of a personalist dictatorship – a regime in which there are few institutional limits on the leader’s power – Putin must balance the competing interests between important elites and maintain at least the appearance of support. public in order to be considered a legitimate leader. .

Until 2020, Putin used gendered language in his speeches to signal his alignment with a variety of elites and public constituencies that supported him. He was sending mixed signals to both relatively progressive Russians who value the role of women in the workplace and conservatives wanting a return to “traditional family values” to keep everyone on his side.

But after July 2021, when he published an essay claiming that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, Putin no longer shied away from making sexist and LGBTQ+-phobic comments in important contexts.

At an October 2021 meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club – a Moscow-based think tank and discussion forum with which Putin is closely associated – he said teaching children about gender fluidity was “really monstrous” and “borders on a crime against humanity”.

At his December 2021 national press conference, Putin announced:

“I maintain the traditional approach that a woman is a woman, a man is a man, a mother is a mother and a father is a father.”

And at a press conference shortly before invading Ukraine, he dismissed Volodymyr Zelensky’s supposed dislike of the Minsk Accords, a 2014 ceasefire agreement aimed at ending fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Putin said of the Ukrainian president: “Whether you like it or not, my beauty, you have to put up with it” – a possible reference to a Soviet punk song that justifies the rape of a dead woman.

Putin was also signaling his allegiance to critics of the “moral decadence” of Western nations whose perspectives, not coincidentally, overlap with those of Putin’s extremist advisers on Ukraine.

Several weeks into the war, however, cracks seem to be emerging among the elites. If a palace coup is in sight, it may come from high-ranking officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the KGB) who are more concerned with their own power than with protecting Putin and his “shirtless cult of personality”. .”

Read more: Could Vladimir Putin be ousted following his invasion of Ukraine?

Target gender, feminists, LGBTQ+ advocates

Over the past decade, gender and LGBTQ+ issues have become central targets of repression in Russia aimed at protecting Putin’s regime from perceived domestic threats.

Members of the punk feminist protest group Pussy Riot were prosecuted for demonstrating in 2011 and 2012 against widespread voter fraud.

In 2013, the LGBTQ+ community became the enemy of the people under the so-called “gay propaganda” law that sparked vigilante violence and caused many LGBTQ+ people to flee Russia and seek asylum in the West.

There have also been increasing restrictions on abortion and domestic violence has been partially decriminalised.

Read more: Russian feminists protest the war and its propaganda with stickers, posters, performances and graffiti

The state has also silenced feminist and LGBTQ+ scholarship by labeling gender studies research centers as “foreign agents” and forcing scholars out of the country.

Feminist and LGBTQ+ advocates have also been harassed by far-right hate groups like the infamous Male State with the tacit approval of Russian authorities. The same hate groups are currently among the happiest cheerleaders for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Anti-war and anti-Putin activism

It’s no surprise that women, feminists and LGBTQ+ activists have been at the forefront of anti-war and anti-Putin resistance.

In recent weeks, Pussy Riot has produced an NFT to raise funds for Ukraine, feminist activists have risked arrest and beatings for taking part in anti-war protests, and mothers of soldiers in Siberia have attempted to hold local authorities accountable for using their sons as cannon fodder.

Whether these activists use stereotypical gender roles (like soldier mothers) or assert non-normative gender politics (as feminists or queer activists), they challenge a regime that relies on patriarchy for the legitimacy of its chief.

In sum, gender rights are explicitly democratic, so they threaten authoritarian regimes like Russia’s that rely on traditional and unequal gender roles, heteronormativity and, above all, the cult of masculinity. .

Putin’s anger at Ukraine for its assertion of autonomy, including advances toward democracy and human rights, is fueled by his patriarchal belief that Ukraine’s uniquely “feminine” role was to submit to the will of its strongest neighbour.

Ukrainians are now paying the price for a regime that disregards the sovereignty of their nation and the autonomy of Russian citizens.