In my presentation, I take to analyze “drag Putin” as a recent iconographical phenomenon which has been widely (re)produced in gay prides, public protests, media, and social networks by different LGBTQ/queer groups around the world that seek to confront the homophobic politics of Vladimir Putin. Drag Putin anonymously emerged on the Internet just after the “gay propaganda law” was adopted in Russia, in order to criticize Putin as the face, the “brand” of Russian homophobic politics. However, the ambiguous character of drag Putin has been raising conflicting emotions, opinions and evaluations within queer and trans communities that follow from differently perceived strategies of the visual politics of this image. Trans activists understand this image as transphobic and emphasize the strategy of shaming that seems problematic to them. Their critique addressed to this image draws attention to the aspect that the traits of femininity, gayness and camp are taken to shame and humiliate Putin and this consequently reinforces those traits as shameful. The members of trans community that find this picture insulting assert that “they aren’t jokes”. They insist on reading drag Putin critically in order to expose (internalized) transphobia of those using this image. However, others perceive drag Putin as the strategy of dragging/camping that subverts and “denaturalizes” the homophobic regime of Putin. Hence, I set my research direction to examine the hermeneutical conflicts that shape different perceptions of drag Putin and to investigate the possibilities of a more fair interpretation of this image. In order to go to the core of this conflict while simultaneously keeping a critical distance from these two overly simplistic interpretations and exploring other more complex ways of understanding it, I determine my orientation to “reparative reading” (as theorized by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick) as the guiding mode of my interpretational work. For it can explain the functioning of those iconographies without falling into “paranoid” theories or interpretations and do justice to all the complexities that structure this image. Reparative reading shows that the critique drag Putin delivers is based on the visual strategy that critically incorporates Putin’s image into the iconography of queer movements and culture, which is in turn supported by critical intimacies, the pleasure of critique and the sexualization of Putin within gay culture. This reparative strategy changed Putin from being a gay enemy to a gay icon for political reasons to neutralize his homophobic politics, discourse and representations while not surrendering to negativity and despair inflicted by homophobic politics. All this became possible only because of the communal resources – such as camp, drag, and (especially) shame – being employed for queer reparative activism. My presentation will show how exactly shame and the politics of shaming can be redirected and reappropriated for reparative ends in queer activism today.