'Alone and in fear': ordeal of married gay couple forced to flee Russia
Pavel Stotsko and Yevgeny Voitsekhovsky followed Russian law but their Danish marriage put their lives at risk
On a cold January evening, as plainclothes police officers hammered relentlessly on the door of their flat near Moscow, newlywed gay couple Pavel Stotsko and Yevgeny Voitsekhovsky began to consider fleeing Russia.
“It was a siege situation. The police were in the entrance to the building, and all around it,” Stotsko said this week from the Netherlands, where the couple, who are both 28, were recently granted asylum. “We sat in the flat like in a prison cell, totally alone and in fear,” said Voitsekhovsky.
The two men’s problems with the Russian
