As reported by a human rights group SK SOS operating in Chechnya, authorities in Russia are forcing imprisoned gay men to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine by blackmailing them into “volunteering”. The group is aware of at least seven such cases, with one of the gay men sent to the frontline having already been killed.

In 2017, reports started to emerge of serious human rights violations taking place in the Russian Republic of Chechnya, where gay men were held and tortured in a secret network of prisons. Many of the men, who were entrapped through dating apps and then forced to name others, didn’t survive the captivity.

It is estimated that over 100 gay men died during this persecution between 2017 and 2019. Many more were forced to flee the region. In a 2021 report, the Council of Europe described what happened in Chechnya as “the single most egregious example of violence against LGBTI people in Europe that has occurred in decades”.

The crisis group SK SOS was established in 2021 with the aim of providing assistance to LGBTQ+ individuals who are facing life-threatening persecution, discrimination, and abuse in the North Caucasus. The organisation has since become known for its effort to protect queer people from abuse by Chechen authorities.

On September 4, SK SOS reported that they knew of at least seven gay men from Chechnya who had been sent to fight in Ukraine by authorities in Russia. The group cited data that indicated that Chechen security forces had started to forcibly send queer men to Ukraine even before the Russian government announced “partial mobilisation” into the army across the country.

The practice started in early September 2022, when seven men were detained in Chechnya on suspicion of being gay. They were threatened with fabricated criminal charges and subsequently given the choice of paying a ransom or volunteering for the war in Ukraine. The ransom amounted to 1.5 million rubles (over €14,000), which three of the men could not afford, resulting in them being forced to “volunteer”. According to SK SOS’s report, one of these men has already been killed in the war.

According to the human rights group, an “increasing wave of detentions” of gay men in Chechnya took place in late August this year. Security forces in the region are reportedly using dating apps to trap the men and also taking control of their social media accounts to set up dates with other people and detain them when they show up.