Jan Dvorkin had raised and nurtured his adopted son in Moscow for seven years till, sooner or later in May, the Russian authorities notified him they had been revoking custody. A lady Mr. Dvorkin knew had filed an official grievance, saying that as a result of he was transgender and homosexual, he was an unfit dad or mum.

When Mr. Dvorkin requested the girl why she had reported him, she informed him he had introduced it on himself, and “that I could have easily avoided it by staying in the closet.”

He managed to search out one other household to take the boy, who’s deaf, in order that the kid wouldn’t be despatched to an orphanage.

Mr. Dvorkin’s expertise underscores the more and more repressive remedy homosexual and transgender persons are subjected to throughout Russia — a hardship that appears sure to develop as the federal government leverages the conflict in Ukraine as justification for better restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. life.

Critics, together with authorized and medical professionals and homosexual rights activists, view the marketing campaign as an effort to distract from Russia’s navy failings in Ukraine — by making a boogeyman it could painting as a menace from a deviant and corrupt West.

“It is a common practice to look for internal enemies when their external enemy turns out to be tougher than expected,” Mr. Dvorkin, 32, mentioned in an interview from Moscow. “With no success on the front line, Putin found an easy enemy, a vulnerable group whom he can defeat in Russia.”

As with many repressive measures, Mr. Putin himself appeared to have impressed the legislation.

Long earlier than his invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin had scorned the concept of homosexual rights. But as his navy stumbled, he started to rewrite the conflict as a Western try to undermine Russian safety and “traditional values.”

He took goal at questions of gender identification in addition to sexual orientation, repeatedly denigrated transgender individuals in his speeches, mocking the concept of “Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2” as a substitute of “mom and dad,” and prompt that the West sought to make the world undertake “dozens of genders.”

The new legislation bans all gender transitions in addition to altering genders on official paperwork like passports. It turned harsher because it proceeded in Russia’s Parliament; usually a rubber stamp for Mr. Putin’s favored laws, it overwhelmingly handed the legislation. The closing model annuls marriages when one partner adjustments gender and bans adoptions by such {couples}.

The legislation primarily removes the power of transgender individuals to manage their very own our bodies, rights activists mentioned, and even when individuals had the means to journey overseas in search of surgical procedure, which many don’t, they’d not be allowed to replace official paperwork. Having the mistaken gender on identification papers would create hurdles in numerous points of life corresponding to employment and journey.

The new legislation additionally bans remedy with both estrogen or testosterone, that are usually taken earlier than present process transition surgical procedure. There are restricted exceptions for individuals who had began the method and already modified paperwork.

Critics mentioned the ban could lead on to what’s primarily a black marketplace for the medication. One transgender individual in St. Petersburg mentioned {that a} clandestine lab there was already making an attempt to make estrogen from over-the-counter medication. Illicit testosterone was an even bigger problem, mentioned the individual, who insisted on anonymity to keep away from retribution.

Surveys by the independent pollster Levada present that, over the past decade, the Kremlin’s propaganda marketing campaign in opposition to the L.G.B.T.Q. group might have affected Russian attitudes: The proportion of respondents who mentioned they seen homosexual individuals with disgust or concern elevated from 26 p.c in 2013 to 38 p.c in 2021.

In 2013, the primary Russian legislation against disseminating “gay propaganda” was framed as defending kids. This time, with the conflict as a backdrop, the legislation banning gender transition was introduced as a matter of nationwide safety.

“The war is not only on the front line, the war is going on in the minds and souls, and we want to protect our country from being destroyed from within,” Pyotr Tolstoy, a hard-line deputy speaker of Parliament, wrote on Telegram.

The idea of nationwide safety has develop into an more and more fluid one, mentioned Max Olenichev, a lawyer who defends L.G.B.T. individuals. “It has become an ephemeral thing that can mean absolutely anything,” he mentioned. “Whenever you do not want to give a reason, just say ‘national security.’”

The legislation additionally corresponds with Mr. Putin’s try to painting Russia as a bastion of what he calls “traditional family values,” a longstanding effort to enchantment to conservative voters at dwelling and overseas.

The hope is that help for his social agenda will lengthen to endorsing the conflict, mentioned Alexander Kondakov, a sociologist at University College Dublin. “By targeting a group that is already marginalized, they amass support for the war and any other cause that the government wants,” he mentioned.

For the L.G.B.T. Q. group, the legislation was yet one more blow.

Mr. Dvorkin described the temper amongst transgender individuals as “dark and depressing,” with members bracing for extra hate crimes. “There was already an increase in vocal hate groups, and since the law passed they have gone off the rails,” he mentioned.

Violence in opposition to homosexual individuals surged after the 2013 legislation, mentioned Mr. Kondakov, who research the intersection of legislation and safety for the L.G.B.T. group. Prosecutions additionally jumped after the stricter model handed final December, based on a report by Novaya Gazeta Europe, an impartial newspaper.

Mr. Dvorkin, who started transitioning at 28, is the founding father of Center T, which affords medical and different recommendation to hundreds of transgender individuals. The authorities just lately designated the group a “foreign agent,” a label whose onerous necessities carry an automated stigma, and he fears it can quickly need to shutter or go underground.

Mr. Dvorkin started searching for a brand new dwelling for his son not lengthy after the stricter legislation passed last December. Repeated warnings from the youngsters’s companies workplace, which supervised the adoption, in opposition to discussing his gender identification and sexual orientation on-line, in addition to a court-imposed high quality, signaled that his custody was in jeopardy.

His son, now 10, additionally had a kidney illness. In June, Mr. Dvorkin struggled to find a household keen to take him. He lastly persuaded one to take action, then managed to persuade officers to not return him to an orphanage.

Use of hormones and surgical procedure for transgender individuals was first accepted within the Soviet Union within the Seventies, and by 2017 Russia had developed what many thought-about a rational strategy, leaving the choice as much as a panel of docs and psychiatrists.

Gender transition had not been a lot of a political situation in Russia till now. Initially, the Ministry of Health questioned the necessity for any change, however it quickly surrendered to browbeating by Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Parliament, who accused officers of pursing an American agenda by in search of to emulate “Sodom.”

Although general numbers are usually not available, Mr. Volodin mentioned that 2,700 individuals had at the moment been accepted for gender transitions by the ministry; the supply of the quantity was unclear. Russia’s inhabitants is greater than 143 million.

In St. Petersburg, the one who described the clandestine lab, who makes use of the pronoun they, rushed to complete the method of being legally acknowledged as a lady earlier than the legislation took impact. Describing it as “anarchistic escapism,” they mentioned they invented a brand new, uncommon first identify whose spelling seems like somebody smashed a keyboard with a fist. They mentioned they assured the bureaucrat studying the appliance it was a standard Siberian identify.

“The best thing we can do is to resist this state by simply existing,” they mentioned.

Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.