Despite Russia’s homophobic laws, queer people in Russia are still choosing to become parents.
Writers Karen Shainyan and Yaroslav Rasputin, from a new Russian-language queer media outlet Just Got Lucky, collected five such stories, showing how the desire for children is stronger than fear. The testimonies were then published in Meduza. The true number of LGBTQ parents in Russia is unknown. For safety reasons, all names and locations have been changed.
The article describes many common experiences: the anxiety and adrenaline of parenthood, financial pressures, and fear of exclusion and violence. Their stories touch on how to find the right clinic, strained family relations, homophobia, and what it means to raise children amidst war and militarisation. All queer parents in Russia have to navigate coming out to their own kids in a country that denies them any recognition. The piece highlights stories of survival, but also ones of unexpected solidarity.
“I had a very masculine, ‘brutal’ friend whom I liked a lot,” recalls Artur, 32, an event producer from Khabarovsk. They both came out as gay. Another friend of his was a lesbian, and they agreed to have a child. Their bond deteriorated after she moved away and barred him from staying overnight, leaving him with little time with his son. He has even considered taking her to court: “I have a new partner who really wants to meet my son. My dream is for the three of us to go on vacation and take him to Disneyland.”
Andrey, 30, a teacher from Yekaterinburg, met his future husband on Tinder in 2019. He was initially somewhat unimpressed by the curly-haired lawyer in a bizarre sweater. They came from different worlds. But they shared one key goal: having kids. Andrey’s partner quickly married a female friend, bought a donor egg, and hired a surrogate mother. The cost of parenthood came to about 3.5 million rubles (£33,250 GBP/$45,500 USD).
When their twins were born, joy gave way to terror. Suddenly it was real: two tiny blue, wrinkly newborns. Andrey’s partner burst into tears when they brought them home. With a nanny’s help, parenting became manageable. Even with the threat of being sent to the army, Andrey remembers those years as happy. They already had tickets to Armenia when the call-ups began: “Thank God, everything blew over; but if it starts again, I’m ready to hide in a basement or go to Siberia or Brazil to avoid the war.”
The kids don’t call him dad, just Andrey. As a teacher, he is obligated to promote patriotism and the “traditional family.” No one at the school knows he’s gay. When he joined an LGBTQ parents’ support group, “something burst open inside me.” Now he’s reading Mikita Franko’s The Days of Our Lives, a raw first-person account of living in Russia as a trans man.
In November 2023, the Supreme Court of Russia labelled the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organisation, effectively banning queer activism across the country. It was around then that Marina, 47, from Moscow, started living together with Lena, whom she had met at a playground. “All my heterosexual experience now holds no value for me”, she recalls.
Marina’s own mother looks the other way when they meet on the street. She scolded Marina that she’d let a “member of the LGBT organisation” into her bed: “So, it turns out my mum coined the phrase before the Russian authorities did.” Another headache is her ex-husband, the father of her children, who lives one floor above in the same building. He’s threatened them several times. Marina has so far only come out to her eldest son. It is painful not be able to be more open in sharing her love.
Thanks to her therapist, Alina, 39, a marketer from Tomsk, installed Tinder on her phone and met Masha in 2021. A year later, they were living together and dreaming of having a child. Alina decided she would be the birth mother, “afraid that I wouldn’t be able to love a child who wasn’t biologically mine.” When IVF failed, Masha’s brother stepped in, and they did a home insemination. They decided to be open with their daughter: “It’s important for a person to know their roots.”
Alina wants to share the fact that she is a mother more widely, but keeps her personal life off social media. Masha feels the same: “We’ve had a child, I have so many emotions, so much happiness – and I can’t write about it. I can’t share it with anyone. I can’t tell anyone how she smiled at me for the first time.” It hurts that they can’t say “our” daughter to strangers.
Nina, 42, a lawyer from Chelyabinsk, fell in love with Tanya, who soon became pregnant with a donor’s help. When it came to the birth, they posed as sisters in order that they both be allowed into the labour ward. There are a few men in their circle of friends, so Nina shows her son how to drill and wash the car. At kindergarten, he prefers playing with the girls. “The two of us together,” Nina concludes, “are the perfect mom.”
“After February 24, 2022 (the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine),” Maria recalls that “it stopped mattering who thought what.” The thirty-seven year old music teacher from Yaroslavl had been together for almost four years with Vika, who had previously been married for 15 years, when her husband suggested a threesome. In the end, that never happened. Instead, Vika fell in love with Maria and left her husband.
The husband started threatening to take her sons, 12 and 9, away from her. The younger one sometimes says “my mums” in reference to Maria and Vika; but the older one objects: “No, Masha [a commonly used diminutive of the name Maria] isn’t family.” They don’t actively try to hide it; but they don’t shout about it. Everyone knows that it is the one thing you are not allowed to talk about in Russia.
A friend asks her whether she is afraid to be gay: “I told her that I’ve ‘killed my inner Putin’—that’s what I call it.” Her response is richly sardonic. She is no longer afraid, but she is also not protesting in the streets (“who the hell needs me anyway?”). The worst that can happen, Maria jokes grimly, is being sent to prison – where everyone is a lesbian! And it’s not just LGBTQ people who might face torture in today’s Russia: think of the soldiers in Ukraine. Being afraid just makes things worse.
The article concludes with the following saying: “a Russian always thinks either about moving abroad, or vanishing into the forest.”
This original source article ‘У младшего временами проскальзывает “мои мамы”’ by Karen Shainyan and Yaroslav Rasputin was published in Russian in Meduza on 31 January 2026.
It is available here.
Just Got Lucky is a new media platform for Russian-speaking queer people worldwide, covering LGBTQ news.
Meduza is an independent Russian-language media outlet. Labelled a “foreign Agent” in 2021, it operates from Riga, Latvia.
