The Russian Foreign Ministry sent notes of protest to the embassies of the United States, Great Britain, and Canada on account of them interfering in the internal affairs of Russia and violating Russian law. This was prompted by their displaying a six-color ‘rainbow’ flag, a symbol of the ‘LGBT’ movement, on the buildings of the US and British embassies, and by the statement the Canadian Ambassador made during the nationwide vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution, saying that the amendments ‘if adopted would lead to creation of an increasingly less inclusive national legal framework’.
As reported by iFamNews, on the first day of voting on amendments to the Russian Constitution, the US Embassy in Moscow hung a rainbow flag on its building. Two days later a similar flag appeared on the building of the British embassy; and on that same day the embassies of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand issued a joint statement urging Russia to fulfill its ‘stated commitment’ to protect ‘the rights … of representatives of the LGBTI community’.
Many Russians took this as the five powers interfering in the internal affairs of Russia and putting pressure on Russian citizens to vote against the amendments to the Constitution. Moreover, in a video message recorded by the Canadian Ambassador for the Russian LGBT Network, she openly announced that, in fact, Canada was trying to remake Russian society, promoting ‘rainbow values’—and fully intended to continue doing so in the future!
At that time, the reaction by the Russian Foreign Ministry to this gross violation of the Vienna Convention (which obliges diplomats to respect the laws of the host country and prohibits them from interfering in its internal affairs) did not go beyond making a joke in a comment on Facebook.
The Russian public took this much more seriously, however. That same day, several NGOs sent an open letter to the ambassadors urging them to give up lying and respect real human rights. To date, over 32,000 Russian citizens have signed a petition in support of this letter on the CitizenGO petition platform. More than 20,000 citizens have signed another petition demanding lawmakers and the Foreign Ministry protect Russian values and strongly condemning the provocative actions by the US embassy.
At the same time, at the end of June, when the scandalous behavior of foreign diplomats was being widely discussed in society and covered by the Russian media, the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy, sent an official letter to the Chairman of the State Duma Commission for Investigating Foreign Interference in the Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Deputy Vasily Piskarev, requesting that he assess what was happening and develop a response.
Piskarev responded, and acting on the appeal by the parliamentary commission he heads, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent notes of protest to the embassies of the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, “in which it was emphasized that their actions violated the provisions of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations and national legislation of the Russian Federation.”
As you can see, spurred by the Russian people’s reaction, politicians did finally prompt the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to act. At the same time, it is very gratifying that, to all appearances, Russian society is determined to support the family and the understanding of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Therefore, if anything, the intervention of diplomats from the United States, Great Britain, and other countries most likely achieved the exact opposite of what was intended.
Still, I would like to hope that in the future the Russian Foreign Ministry will more decisively defend genuine human rights and freedoms, such as the right to a true family, the child’s right to a father and mother, the right of parents to raise children in accordance with their religious and moral convictions, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and others, trampled upon in many countries under the influence of ‘LGBT’ ideology—and that it will stop responding to brazen attempts to impose this anti-human and non-legal ideology on Russian citizens by merely laughing it off.