In recent years, the international community has increasingly framed LGBT issues in conjunction with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, drawing heightened attention to the vulnerability of sexual minorities in contexts of war and armed conflict. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is often understood primarily as a military confrontation over “territory,” rooted in questions of security and sovereignty; however, it also possesses a strong character as a war over “values.” Russia’s traditionalist nationalism portrays LGBT communities as a “symbol of moral decay,” constructing a sharp ideological opposition to the liberalism, human rights, and diversity promoted by the West. By contrast, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova have deepened their alignment with the West through applications for European Union membership, where the protection of LGBT rights is regarded as part of “European standards.”

The Putin regime has linked its fear of “color revolutions” and its wariness of liberal values to the Russian Orthodox Church and so-called traditional Russian values, thereby constructing an ideology centered on a “war of values” and claims of “civilizational sovereignty.” Across much of the post-Soviet space, levels of both LGBT rights protection and WPS implementation remain low, and violence and harassment targeting LGBT individuals have long constituted a serious problem. Moreover, beyond the LGBT framework itself, sexual violence against men, used to degrade the dignity of others or as a means of psychological domination, has been widely documented in prisons and within the military, and has been recognized as a grave issue for many years. In wartime in particular, cases of sexual abuse against male prisoners of war and civilian men during ongoing hostilities have been documented, underscoring that conflict-related sexual violence cannot be adequately explained by a fixed dichotomy of “women as victims” and “men as perpetrators.”

Beginning with the 2013 law “on the protection of minors,” which imposed restrictions on LGBT expression, institutional repression has been progressively intensified through measures such as the ban on transgender-related expression introduced after 2022 and the comprehensive prohibition of legal gender change enacted in 2023. Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church has identified Ukraine’s LGBT policies as one of the causes of the war and has sought to legitimize the conflict as a “struggle against liberal values.” While voices opposing the war have existed within religious circles, state repression has deepened divisions within the religious community.

Russia’s LGBT policies also serve a function of political mobilization. By framing LGBT communities as a “symbol of Western moral decay,” the state employs these policies as instruments for domestic consolidation and the construction of a national ideology. In ILGA-Europe’s 2025 assessment, Russia ranked last in Europe with a score of 2 percent, a result attributed primarily to restrictive anti-LGBT legislation, the absence of same-sex marriage, constraints on freedom of expression and assembly, and state-led hate speech. At the same time, questions remain regarding the extent to which LGBT standards are applied consistently and without political arbitrariness in European Union accession decisions.

Although Ukraine’s score in the ILGA-Europe index remains low at 18.76 percent, social tolerance has increased in the course of the war, accompanied by a narrowing of gender disparities, as evidenced by the participation of female soldiers on the front lines. At the same time, significant institutional challenges persist, including the fact that women’s military uniforms are largely procured at the individual level. Ukraine has positioned the protection of LGBT human rights as a component of both its postwar reconstruction strategy and the conditions for European Union accession. The declining size of the population eligible for conscription constitutes a critical challenge for the future.

The three South Caucasus states, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, are strongly shaped by religion, familism, and tradition, and consequently exhibit low levels of social tolerance. Across indicators such as the ILGA-Europe index, female labor force participation, domestic violence prevention measures, and the availability of gender-disaggregated statistics, all three countries face substantial challenges. Georgia has constitutionally committed itself to Euro-Atlantic integration and has pursued the adoption of European-style institutions. However, the current ruling party, Georgian Dream, has increasingly adopted an anti-Western stance, announced the suspension of the European Union accession process until 2028 despite Georgia’s status as a candidate country, and enacted a number of Russia-style laws, including the tightening of anti-LGBT legislation, highlighting the instrumentalization of these issues for political purposes. Armenia has made progress in institutional reform, but continues to face strong resistance from religious actors. Azerbaijan, where Islam constitutes a strong religious backdrop, ranks at the bottom on these indicators, and while symbolic developments such as the appointment of a female speaker of parliament have occurred, her substantive authority is widely regarded as limited.
From a WPS perspective, Ukraine has developed a National Action Plan (NAP) and has made progress in addressing conflict-related sexual violence and supporting displaced women. By contrast, Russia lacks any institutionalized WPS framework, and across the post-Soviet space, budgetary constraints and regional disparities remain common challenges.

In conclusion, LGBT issues are no longer confined to the realm of human rights advocacy or social movements, but are increasingly acquiring the character of “geopolitical resources” and “instruments of political mobilization.” Russia’s anti-LGBT policies function as a technique of governance within an authoritarian system, while Ukraine’s more inclusive approach can be understood as a “redefinition” of democracy. The South Caucasus has emerged as a “zone of value fault lines” where these competing normative frameworks collide. Going forward, the construction of “Inclusive Security” that incorporates sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and other marginalized groups will be critical. Inclusive Security holds the potential to address the underlying challenges associated with LGBT rights and the WPS agenda, and therefore calls for strengthened consideration in future discussions.

(This article is an English translation of a commentary by HIROSE Yoko, Professor, Keio University / Distinguished Research Fellow, JFIR. The original Japanese version was published on the JFIR website on December 8, 2025.)