Russian LGBTQ laws and Ilya's fears are not imaginary
One thing that I keep seeing come up in a variety of discussions about the way Shane and Ilya do not communicate well is how Ilya seems cold, or cruel, or distant, or mean, or closed off, or whatever with Shane, especially whenever the topic of Russia comes up.
So this might get a little long, but as a queer person, sometimes I get the impression that people are equating Ilya with a straight man in USA who has commitment issues, and not realizing the kind of fear that gay or bisexual men have had to live with in so many places for so long.
So here's a summary focusing on Russia.
1991: Ilya was born in the USSR. Gay consensual sex was still criminalized. His father is an abusive policeman with a much, much younger wife who he effectively bullies into suicide over the next 12 years.
1993: Gay consensual sex is decriminalized shortly after the fall of the USSR. This does not change the general attitudes around it, with it having been a component of Article 121 which was used to blackmail LGBTQ persons, or to rob or beat them with impunity, knowing that if they went to police for help they would be the ones imprisoned. So while technically the law was removed, it did not do much to actually change the cultural feelings around it.
2003: Only 22% of Russians polled believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society. So a 12 year old Ilya (who's mother had recently committed suicide and therefore had no adult in his corner) would know and hear from 4 out of 5 people that loving other men was wrong and unacceptable.
2004: A leader of a major political party in Russia called for the death penalty for homosexual activities.
2006: Various Russian states re-criminalize LGBTQ expression. Ilya would be 15, and at that time would have been playing hockey for a decade in a highly competitive, highly masculine, highly homophobic space.
2007: A handful of people attempted to have a peaceful pride parade in Moscow. The mayor called them Satanic publicly, and was supported by the Russian president. The LGBTQ persons were pelted with eggs and rocks. There were approximately 300 nationalist counter demonstrators to the approximately 30 LGBTQ demonstrators, many of whom were punched, kicked, or otherwise assaulted by the nationalist group members - the police actively ignored the aggressors and instead arrested the LGBTQ demonstrators, holding them for hours without medical attention. This would have been the year before Ilya met Shane.
2013: The "gay propaganda law" goes into effect in Russia, criminalizing positive or neutral expression involving LGBTQ topics - everything from posting on social media a still from a movie that has gay characters (not even main characters) to wearing rainbow socks (yes, socks). Ilya would be 22, having been half in love with Shane for the last 5 years, but not only has he had cultural pressure to *never* say that sort of thing out loud, now he has explicit legal prohibition against it every time he goes home to his father and brother (both policemen! both of whom could easily turn him in if he didn't do what they wanted - his brother calls him a "rich faggot" and Ilya says he knows why his brother hates him. It seems quite likely that at the least, his brother knows.)
2014: A prominent politician clarifies that despite the text of the law claiming it is intended to protect minors from harm, its true purpose is to "indicate an understanding of the deviant nature of this type of behavior". As if that wasn't already clear.
2013 - 2016: Premeditated hate crimes against LGBTQ persons that actually make it to court (note that the vast majority of them do not) tripled due to the gay propaganda law having a chilling effect on any sense of safety LGBTQ persons might have had previous to it.
2013 - 2022: Hate crimes in general against LGBTQ persons (again, these are only the ones that actually made it to court) remain at a significant high. Under the gay propaganda law, any expression whatsoever could be construed as gay propaganda - even simply a post of shirtless men with no caption, or discussion of LGBTQ topics in private messages. Regarding Ilya, this is the time period in which he would have been in Russia every summer, and encompasses the Sochi Olympics. There is zero chance he had any reasonable expectation of privacy in texts or in person in Russia, ESPECIALLY after losing high profile games in a high profile sport. It is likely Ilya would not have even been selected for the Olympics or allowed to play for the NHL if there was any knowledge in Russia of his being bisexual. He HAS to cover it with maintaining the playboy image of fucking every available beautiful woman in reach, with keeping Shane as "Jane" and not interacting with him in person at the Olympics where it's obvious that Shane is a man. I think it's very likely that his radio silence for six months after the Olympics is intended to try to keep Shane safe, and for Ilya to try to force some distance between them because being too close to dismiss it as just sex is *terrifying*.
2017 - current: Chechnya (part of the Russian Federation) detains men suspected of gay activity after which they might be blackmailed, held in prison camps, tortured, or returned to their families and outed (with the expectation and sometimes express intent that the families would then commit honor killings). Some well known arrests happened when someone visited briefly, for example one who returned to the country only for his father's funeral. Note that Ilya attends his father's funeral in 2017, though luckily for him, not in Chechnya, and also his brother is less interested in killing him than he is in continuing to take Ilya's money. Still a terrifying thing to have heard even whispers of it happening. Here, Ilya even daring to voice his feelings to Shane, out loud, in the country that criminalizes them, in the language of that country - it's incredibly trusting of Shane that he won't record or keep it somehow, and it also shows just how strong his feelings are that he can't hold them back even though it's an objectively terrible idea to put it in words. The police car driving by in the middle of the monologue underscores this.
2022: the "gay propaganda law" is reworked to even more explicitly ban all LGBTQ expressions in any media, public or private, *including* in private conversations on dating apps. So if Ilya were to go to Russia again, it's likely he would not be able to communicate with Shane at all while he was there.
And all of this is just Russia. USA and Canada are a lot better, but they have a long way to go before it's truly safe to be gay or bisexual everywhere.
Sources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15564886.2023.2167142#d1e542
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10758216.2025.2487577#d1e534
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2003/06/03/chapter-6-social-and-economic-values/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gay_purges_in_Chechnya
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/lgbt/moscow0607/moscow0607web.pdf
https://petertatchellfoundation.org/sochi-will-be-remembered-as-the-anti-gay-olympics/
https://community.middlebury.edu/~moss/RGC2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBTQ_people_in_the_United_States