Russian-Belarusian gay couple Applies for Asylum in Bulgaria
Belarusian Andrei and Russian Alex, who got married in Denmark and now live in Russia, have applied for asylum in Bulgaria. This was reported by Deutsche Welle.
Andrei is a 30-year-old political refugee and artist from the capital of Belarus, Minsk. Alex is from Russia, a journalist and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The pair met when Andrei moved to Moscow in 2011, where he opened a small pottery studio. Both men say it was love at first sight and they have been inseparable ever since.
They got married in Denmark 10 years ago, as same-sex marriage is not recognised in either Russia or Belarus, where increasingly repressive laws make life difficult for LGBT people.
According to Alex, being a journalist in Putin's Russia is becoming increasingly difficult. ‘I regularly received threats on my mobile phone because of my work,’ he says. ‘To be honest, I got used to it because it had been happening for years.
But the threats intensified after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Later that year, the men decided to leave Russia and applied for asylum in Bulgaria. The answer came almost a year later: Alex was allowed to stay, but Andrey was not.
Although both men were able to prove that they had been married in Denmark, they were registered as single in their applications, as Bulgaria does not recognise same-sex marriage. ‘The agency doesn't think that Alex and I have anything in common... They don't think we face the same risks,’ says Andriy.
The men plan to reapply with the support of a lawyer. They will try to prove that as a married couple they are at equal risk of persecution and need joint protection. They also intend to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.
As Belarusian 'Nasha Niva' reports, on 19 October, two women from Belarus - Karolina Lebedeva and Katerina Malyuka Kim - got married in Vilnius. Lithuania does not yet provide for the registration of such marriages by law, so it was registered remotely via video link in the US state of Utah.
Immediately after the ceremony, the couple received an electronic marriage certificate confirming its legality in the United States. According to the Hague Convention, such marriages should be recognised in Lithuania.