As Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Ukraine’s invasion on Feb. 24 last year, he digressed to talk about how the West was trying to destroy “traditional values” and impose LGBTQ attitudes that he derided as degrading and contrary to human nature. More than half a year later he once again interweaved the issue into his annexation declaration about four occupied Ukrainian regions; the war in Ukraine, he suggested, was needed to protect Russian children from “perversions” and to secure a heteronormative future for Russia.