This month sees the launch of an LGBT Portal for Ukraine, giving the former Soviet country an online hub for LGBT community events, information and activism for the first time.

The website, which is funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, is bilingual (English and Russian) and features news, gay travel advice, lifestyle pieces, LGBT rights campaigns, the history of the movement and the science of being gay or trans.

‘The portal is intended to promote cultural, sporting, artistic development of the LGBT community in Ukraine, to provide information support to local LGBT initiatives, to support various events in the LGBT community, and to promptly cover them,’ said a statement from the group behind the website.

‘The vital feature of the portal is also advocacy of the community rights, fighting stigma and discrimination in the Ukrainian society by highlighting the objective information about the lives of people with homosexual orientation.’

Ukrainian LGBT rights activist Bogdan Globa said he thinks the website will ‘stimulate systemic changes in the LGBT community’.

Elton John is focused on helping the LGBT rights movement in the eastern Europe country, which is under threat from an active far-right.

John performed a charity concert in the capital Kyiv last July and called for an end to persecution of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.