Obama To Meet With LGBT Groups This Week — In Russia

President Barack Obama apparently has a bit of extra time in his schedule after canceling his meeting with Vladimir Putin, and will meet with Russian LGBT activists and organizations this week while attending the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. The G-20, also known as the Group of Twenty, is an annual meeting of representatives — usually heads of state — from the top 20 economies in the world. Relations between the U.S. and Russia have quickly soured recently.

President Obama has been vocal about his concern for the LGBT athletes and allies at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the LGBT community in Russia, since President Putin effectively declared war on gay people in June by signing the anti-gay “homosexual propaganda” law.

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The meeting will take place Thursday at the St. Petersburg’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, according to Buzzfeed:

The groups include veteran human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, legal aid NGO director Pavel Chikov, and Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT organization. Another local LGBT group, the LGBT Network, is believed to be attending, though director Igor Kochetkov declined to comment to BuzzFeed, saying that he had been “asked not to say anything.”

Apparently, a top LGBT activist, Nikolai Alekseev, was not invited — not surprising, given what some might call his schizophrenic comments, and attacks against the west and Russia.

Between Russia’s refusal to deport NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden back to the U.S. and a recent warning to Russian citizens about U.S. “kidnapping,” and the disparate paths Russia and America have taken on Syria, along with general frosty relations, clearly President Obama’s meeting with the LGBT groups will irk President Putin even more.

 

Image by Rusa LGBT via Facebook

 

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