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Five LGBT rights advocates from Ukraine who are in D.C. this week met with their American colleagues and elected officials.

The activists — who are from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and the cities of Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia — arrived on March 15. They are scheduled to leave D.C. on Saturday.

The activists visited the Washington Blade offices on Monday. They have also met with representatives of the Human Rights Campaign, P-FLAG, Human Rights First, the Council for Global Equality, HIPS, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Metropolitan Police Department’s LGBT Liaison Unit, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

Gay Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline met with the activists on Capitol Hill. They also visited the offices of U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and spoke with members of their respective staffs.

The activists also met with former Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe.

“It was a very important trip for us,” Anna Sharyhina of Queerhome Kharkiv told the Blade on Tuesday before she spoke at a reception that HRC and the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, which supports pro-democracy efforts in the former Soviet republic, co-hosted.

“It’s very important to keep connections and continue establishing networks with a country that already got rid of colonialism, slavery and LGBTQ discrimination,” said Sharyhina in remarks that she made through an interpreter at the reception. “We are really excited that you continue this work and move towards an inclusive society.”

The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation sponsored the activists’ trip. Open World Leadership Center, which Congress established in 2000 in order to administer a program that has invited more than 26,000 civil society leaders from the former Soviet Union to the U.S., supported the delegation through grants organizations that provided the advocates with housing and activities.

Russian activist recently detained in eastern Ukraine

Discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity remain commonplace in Ukraine, even though the country’s government seeks closer ties to Europe.

Grey Violet, a Russian LGBT activist who is transgender, disappeared near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in late January. Security forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, which pro-Russian separatists control, released Violet and Victoria Miroshnichenko, another human rights advocate, a few weeks later.

The separatists have banned the promotion of so-called gay propaganda to minors. Russian President Vladimir Putin — who annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 — signed an identical law in 2013.

Members of Right Sector, a Ukrainian nationalist group, in 2015 injured nine police officers when they sought to disrupt Kiev’s annual Pride march. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Randy Berry, who is the special U.S. envoy for LGBT and intersex rights, in 2016 spoke at a Kiev Pride’s opening reception.

“I’m so impressed by different phenomena that don’t work in Ukraine,” Rostyyslav Melvski of the Zaporizhzhia-based GenderZed told the Blade on Tuesday, referring to U.S. activists’ ability to lobby members of Congress.

‘America has made a lot of progress’

The activists arrived in the U.S. roughly two months after President Trump’s inauguration.

The Associated Press on Wednesday reported Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, once worked for a Russian billionaire who sought to advance Putin’s interests. FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed his agency is investigating whether there are connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

The 2018 budget blueprint that Trump released last week would cut the budgets of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development by 28 percent. There is mounting concern the White House will rollback or end U.S. efforts to promote LGBT and intersex rights abroad, even though there is nothing in the budget proposal that specifically indicates they will end.

“America has made a lot of progress,” Melvski told the Blade. “It can’t be cut or just ignored by one president who is not the whole country.”