The suspension of Ruslan Kutayev from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces should have been straightforward. His remarks, which effectively justified so-called “honor killings” and described LGBTQ people as “outcasts and perverts,” crossed a clear line. 

But the episode has exposed a broader crisis within Russia’s democratic opposition, one that cannot be solved by the removal of one individual. No real alternative to Putinism can emerge without a clean break from the Kremlin’s chauvinism and its aggressively imposed patriarchal order.

Kutayev, who leads the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus, argued that LGBTQ people from the North Caucasus should keep their identity private rather than publicly associate it with their ethnicity. On the topic of “honor killings,” he said decisions about a woman’s fate — whether to punish, marry her off, or even kill her — are matters for the family to decide. He also promoted conspiracy theories, suggesting that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was brought to power by actors in the United States, including “Zionists.”

After the backlash to his statements, Kutayev said he had been misunderstood and insisted in a follow-up interview that no one has the right to take a life. His earlier remarks, however, reflected a coherent worldview.

Chechen PACE Member Suspended After LGBTQ and ‘Honor Killing’ Comments

The Kremlin has spent years building a political identity around the persecution of marginalized, vulnerable groups. It has framed a non-existent “international LGBT movement” as an extremist threat and decriminalized........

© The Moscow Times