2018 has demonstrated a notable increase in activity and visibility of the Ukrainian LGBT community and some improvement in the attitude of Ukrainian society and the state towards it. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities have not been ready to fulfil their commitments under the Action Plan on Human Rights on the adoption of important fundamental changes in legislation; however, they have not refused ultimately to implement changes and have actually taken certain decisions to protect the interests of LGBT people.
The police provided effective protection of LGBT events throughout the country in the cases where their conducting was agreed upon in advance; however, the practice of investigating hate crimes based on homo/transphobia remained extremely inefficient and unsatisfactory.
Ukrainian churches continued to actively support homophobic discrimination initiatives of other organisations and activists, but, except for the UOC (MP), they refrained from hate speech and their own incitements to discrimination. “The protection of the traditional family” became the main slogan of the current anti-LGBT campaigns in Ukraine.