Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called for an international investigation into the United States’ longstanding promotion of diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Her remarks came on Tuesday, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive orders rescinding protections for transgender rights and dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs within the federal government.
“Can you imagine how many people’s lives have been ruined over the years of promoting this nonsense?” Zakharova wrote on Telegram.
She questioned the impact on “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people” who were compelled to “accept the ideology of amputating healthy genitals and replacing them with artificial ones.”
Zakharova accused Washington officials of pressuring other nations to “show solidarity with what they called anti-scientific narratives,” describing it as “the very propaganda that kills both the body and the soul.”
She further alleged that this “inhumane doctrine” was enforced through aid, sanctions, political and financial pressure, and “the humiliation of human dignity and bullying.”
On his first day back in office, President Trump revoked 78 executive orders from the previous administration, including measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals. Federal agencies have been given 60 days to terminate DEI-related practices.
In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to end “the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” advocating instead for a “colorblind and merit-based” society. He declared that official U.S. policy would recognize “only two genders: male and female.”
The rollback of DEI programs has prompted immediate backlash from civil rights groups, who have vowed to “fight back against these harmful provisions.”
Some corporations, including Walmart and Meta, have already begun reversing DEI initiatives, citing a shifting legal and policy landscape.
