Timofey Sozaev left Russia in September 2019. After nearly 20 years as an LGBTQ+ rights activist, cofounding several organizations, he found out, while visiting friends in the United States, that the Kremlin had become aware of his advocacy work. He didn’t go back.
It wasn’t an easy decision. Sozaev knew that not returning would mean “handing over everything that I love and that is valuable to me to the enemy: obscurantist homophobes, an inhuman political regime that will stop at nothing.” Still, while he was in the US, he realized he was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, hypervigilance, problems sleeping, poor concentration. They got worse as the day of his scheduled return approached. “My psyche and body just told me ‘no,’” he says. He applied for asylum.
Five years later, life for LGBTQ+ Russians is even more harrowing than it was when Sozaev left. Over the past decade, building on the anti-“gay propaganda” laws that had targeted Sozaev, President Vladimir Putin has imposed further restrictions on the freedoms of queer citizens, citing a desire to return the country to “traditional family values.”
Last year, Russia enacted a law banning gender-affirming care. In March, the government added the “LGBT movement” to its list of extremist and terrorist organizations. It represents, says Ksen Pallegedara Murry, an Oregon-based family law attorney who works with LGBTQ+ clients and Russian immigrants, a “direct government campaign targeting the extermination of queers.” As authorities raid gay bars, queer Russians have moved off of open social networks and onto private Telegram chats to organize, socialize, and even find the support and resources necessary to flee.
“Telegram is now an empowerment tool for Russian LGBTQ+ people,” Sozaev says. It gives them the “opportunity to feel and see that they are not alone. This breaks down isolation and restores people's belief in their strengths.” Since arriving in the US, he has started his own Telegram channel to provide help to the Russian-speaking LGBTQ+ community in the US. It has more than 2,000 individual subscribers, a number that doesn’t include the people who view it without subscribing.
Sozaev’s channel is one of many, though exactly how many is all but impossible to determine. Roughly half of Russia’s 140 million residents use Telegram, so being on the messaging app itself doesn’t draw unwanted attention. Still, LGBTQ+ citizens routinely create new channels to avoid government surveillance and detection. Under Russia’s latest restrictions, any website deemed to have pro-LGBTQ+ content is added to a national block list, making it inaccessible without a VPN (and even VPNs are in jeopardy). Telegram is the next best option.
Because it allows for large group chats (channels can have unlimited subscribers; groups cap out at 200,000 people) as well as private messages, Telegram gives LGBTQ+ people in Russia and beyond the ability to help each other as a group or one-on-one. But it’s also not ironclad. There are constant worries of government surveillance, and the app has been a hub for the Kremlin’s anti-queer propaganda.
The presence of that propaganda also may provide a bit of cover, says Kyle Walter, global head of investigative research and innovation at Logically. Putin, for example, banned Facebook and Twitter/X in 2022 for failing to toe the line on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Because Telegram purports to be an agnostic platform, the Kremlin can keep its own messages on it while drowning out messages from actual queer Russians. “Because they're able to utilize Telegram so significantly in their propaganda and disinformation operations,” Walter says, “there's less of an onus to crack down on it.”
Still, Walter notes, there’s always speculation that the Kremlin has access to the platform’s backend data, and it’s risky to openly communicate on the platform as a queer person. (Telegram did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.)
This makes Telegram both an essential tool and one queer Russians use in secret. Adriana Espinosa, the director of cash assistance and emergency travel support with Rainbow Railroad, a nonprofit that helps at-risk LGBTQ+ people worldwide get to safety, explains that the organization is reliant on digital communication “with activists on the ground as well as persons facing persecution,” but wouldn’t say which messaging apps or platforms the organization uses, citing security concerns. Espinosa added that assisting queer people in Russia has become harder in recent months, and some grassroots orgs on the ground have had to cease operations.
“We cannot disclose specific details of how we support the relocation of individuals, as this would jeopardize their safety and our ability to support them,” Espinosa says. “The Russian LGBTQI+ community is resilient, and some individuals have found their own ways of leaving the country.”
Telegram’s centrality to the lives of Russians, LGBTQ+ and otherwise, dates back to its launch. Founded in Russia in 2013, Telegram now claims nearly a billion users worldwide. Practically since its founding, though, experts have wondered how safe those users’ data is. Although often referred to as “secure,” it only offers end-to-end encryption in its “secret” chats. On messaging apps like Signal, end-to-end encryption is the default.
Despite this, Telegram has become popular among groups worldwide looking to organize. In the US, it’s a hub for QAnon conspiracy theorists and extremists; it was also reportedly used by those calling for disruptions at President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Several far-right channels were kicked off the platform around the same time. It’s also been a gathering place for extremists in the UK and Ireland.
Iran outright banned Telegram in 2018 after it was used to organize street protests against the regime the previous year. The ban had serious implications for activists, journalists, and others seeking to exchange information. Russia also attempted to block the app in 2018, after founder Pavel Durov refused to hand over user data to the Kremlin. Those efforts ultimately failed, and the ban was lifted in 2020. Durov made a similar commitment to protect the data of users in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of that country in 2022. Security experts expressed concern, but Telegram has remained a popular news and communication tool in the region.
Telegram’s prevalence as a far-right hub in some parts of the world and a place for both pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ content in Russia gets at broader questions of moderation and regulation on social media platforms. Any platform that’s not trying to crack down on any type of content, Walter notes, will become “a place where people who are not able to express themselves freely on mainstream platforms are gonna move, because they just feel safer posting there.”
As Russia’s war in Ukraine has continued, it has embarked on a campaign to eradicate what it sees as the West’s influence, including acceptance of queer people. Walter notes that some anti-LGBTQ+ Telegram propaganda campaigns in the region go so far as to claim Ukraine is training its soldiers to be gay. Nine months into the conflict, the country’s parliament passed a law criminalizing attempts to promote “nontraditional sexual relations” in everything from movies to ads to online posts.
“The restrictions, which render life precarious for LGBT+ individuals in Russia, have a much more ambitious purpose—to consolidate conservative support at home and position Russia as the defender of ‘traditional values,’” Graeme Reid, the director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBTQ+ rights program, wrote last year. That precariousness has only increased in the year since.
Before Sozaev fled Russia, his primary organizing tool and social media hub had been Facebook. A Russian court banned Facebook, along with Instagram, in 2022, labeling the Meta platforms as “extremist.” The ruling spared WhatsApp, but for organizers like Sozaev, Telegram has become their meeting place.
Still, LGBTQ+ people remain cautious. Some of their public Telegram channels have been targeted, indicating that the government is watching. Anyone who uses their real name on the app risks investigation. Sozaev explains that people often encourage each other to delete the Telegram app from their phones before trying to cross the border. Their devices could be searched, and the presence of the app could put them in jeopardy and prevent them from being allowed out of the country. Telegram groups also provide tutorials instructing LGBTQ+ people on what they should do if they are being questioned by Russian authorities.
“Just going on our Telegram channel and seeing concrete steps for how people get out” and then finding community with other LGBTQ+ Russians is what is most effective, says Maxim Ibadov, the national coordinator for RUSA LGBTQ+, a nonprofit formed in 2008 to support Russian-speaking queer people in the US.
There are about 1,000 people on RUSA LGBTQ+’s Telegram channel, and although most members are US-based, people in Russia frequently reach out to the organization looking for ways out of the country. Often, people active in the chat connect people looking to escape with organizations like Rainbow Railroad. Others share strategies for where they crossed the border.
Ibadov notes that Telegram is one of the primary ways their organization connects with people trying to leave Russia and community members who have recently arrived in the US and need support rebuilding their lives. “They don’t know where to go, and they might not have the desire or comfort to go to our in-person events at first,” Ibadov explains, noting that being able to follow the RUSA LGBTQ+’s Telegram is a way to build trust and confidence in the organization and its members.
Telegram also helps RUSA LGBTQ+ community leaders know what kinds of support their members need. The organization recently started a Telegram chat for queer-identifying parents after a lesbian couple who made it to the US from Russia reached out looking for opportunities for their children to connect with other kids.
The interactive nature of Telegram also lends itself to community members providing mutual aid to each other. Ibadov says that often someone will come to their Telegram channel to ask about how to access health care or legal support, and before RUSA LGBTQ+ staff or volunteers can respond, numerous community members will have already weighed in.
Ibadov notes that for many LGBTQ+ people in Russia, Telegram is one of the few places they can see people living openly. As a result, they see their organization’s presence on the platform as vital not just for providing resources but also giving hope. “LGBTQ+ people in Russia can’t [publicly] fight; we have to fight for them here,” they say, “so there is hope for them there.”