LGBTQ+ Russians seeking refuge in Argentina
29, who got married less than a month after moving to Buenos Aires. The pair had also changed their last names in Russia so they could pretend to be sisters.
“It’s a very important moment for us. We’re waiting for very long to be officially family,” Nadezhda Skvortosova said after getting married at a Buenos Aires civil registry.
Many of the Russians who arrive in Argentina knew little about the country before moving.
“Tango, Che Guevara, and that it was a Spanish
colony,” joked Nikolai Shushpan, a 26-year-old gay man who moved to Argentina’s capital in October when he started fearing he could be drafted into the war.
Shushpan now shares an apartment in downtown Buenos Aires with Dimitry Yarin, a fellow Russian he met on a dating app.
Yarin, 21, said he long had plans to move to a more tolerant country but “the war accelerated that decision.”
Because of the discrimination they face at home, many of the Russians who arrive in Argentina request refugee status, a process that can take as long as three years.
Authorities have increased controls on Russian migrants recently after the arrest of two alleged Russian spies with Argentine passports in Slovenia late last year.
For now, Shushpan is enjoying living openly as a gay man for the first time. Back home, there was always tension and the feeling “that something could happen.”
“The only country where I didn’t feel that is here. You don’t have to be worried all the time. The only thing you have to worry about is prices,” Shushpan said, referring to Argentina’s inflation rate — one of the world’s highest — of about 110%.
After a little more than a year in Argentina, the Dominis share that feeling of relief.
In the northwestern Russian city of Petrozavodsk, Anastasia, 34, and Anna, 44, barely told anyone about their relationship and two sets of twins, ages 3 and 6. There was a constant fear authorities would take their children away and put them in an orphanage, Anastasia Domini said.
Now they live without having to worry that someone could take their kids or put them in prison.
“We’re absolutely used to our status of married women and that we are parents of lots of kids and that we can be free here,” she said.