There is an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization, for the uninitiated) called “KyivPride” that runs the annual LGBT “Pride” march in Ukraine, and has done so for approximately a decade. KyivPride, like many similarly situated organizations, received US government largesse through a dizzying array of funding mechanisms — mainly stemming from USAID, the agency to which a sledgehammer has now ostensibly been taken by the Second Trump Administration. Whatever else one may think of the recent developments around USAID, it’s simply factually correct to state that US taxpayers had previously been subsidizing LGBT activism in the Donbass — a fact that can only be seen as facially ridiculous when explained to the majority of Americans. Simply take a look at KyivPride’s own public website for confirmation of its highly fruitful partnership with USAID…
As much as the newly emboldened DOGE whiz-kid crew might want to take credit for dramatically unearthing and exposing these blunderous expenditures, the reality is they’ve long been available for public inspection. That they never aroused much scrutiny till now is perhaps the real scandal.
As the money has gotten doled out, the standardized LGBT acronym has concurrently grown (now approximating something like 2SLGBTQIA+, but who’s really keeping track anymore). US diplomatic personnel participated in a Ukrainian “Pride” march in September 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion, when there perhaps might’ve been some more pressing diplomatic matters to attend to. An annual report from USAID on its Ukraine-related activities, which I helpfully saved years ago before DOGE largely nuked the agency’s assets from the internet, boasts that these Pride Marches had been “safely conducted” in Ukraine since 2015 — a year after the Ukrainian government was overthrown in a violent putsch, and US funding for “civil society” organs in the country greatly accelerated.
Hellbound and Down 