Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, previously holding the position from 1999 until 2008. He was also the Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.
Sad but safe, LGBTQ+ Russians find refuge abroad
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, journalist Karen Shainyan was one of the best-known openly gay figures in Russian journalism, covering LGBTQ+ life in a country where sharing “gay propaganda” with minors has been banned since 2013.
But then the war began and, even though Shainyan joined the first protests against President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send tanks across the border, he soon started to look for a way out of his home country. “I was put on the foreign agents list, which made my life in Russia dangerous and very complicated,” 40-year-old Shainyan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a cafe in a popular district of Berlin, where he and his partner now live.
Russia uses the “foreign agent” tag – which carries Cold War spying connotations – as a label for people and organisations it deems to be engaging in political activity with foreign support.