Unicorn Battalion

As part of the grant support for documentary photographers from UAPP, we share the documentary projects of the finalists who received grant support in the previous season. This time we present the project “Unicorn Battalion” by Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Sasha Maslov.

We remind you that until August 28, the recruitment of candidates for the mentorship and microgrant program from the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers continues, please read the details of participation by link. 

The story below is conducted on behalf of Sasha Maslov.

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On a rainy June day in the center of Kiev, the flags of Pride, Ukraine and the European Union were wet in the rain. About 500 people gathered for the Pride March, which lasted only an hour and covered about a hundred meters. The city of Kiev and the police gave permission for the march, but limited it to one and a half city blocks, citing security issues.

It was not the typical Pride that New Yorkers, Berlin or Amsterdam expected to see on the streets of their cities. The first two rows of parade participants consisted of servicemen and veterans holding placards calling on the EU and Ukraine's other partners to provide more weapons. Other posters called for an end to Russia's genocide of Ukrainians, to provide demining systems and to release Azovstal defenders — prisoners of war held in Russia and tortured. Slogans for equality, for the bill on the legalization of civil partnerships and the protection of the rights of the LGBTQ+ community were heard.

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Now, next to her fiancé Diana Garasco, Maria embodies resilience and defiance, having gone through frantic trials at the front and facing massive homophobia.

Maria Wola, 31, and her fiancé Diana Garasco, 25, stood in the front rows, holding hands. For Maria, a soldier of the 47th Brigade, this moment was long-awaited.

Last year, on October 24, 2022, Maria surrendered. She spoke to Diana on the phone and said she had decided to take her own life. She planned to do this by overdosing on Hidazepam, a selective anxiolytic benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to treat anxiety and panic attacks.

Diana and Maria had been dating for only a few weeks. It has been about three months since Diana, a civilian volunteer from the White Church, wrote Mary on Instagram, responding to one of the stories from the dirty trenches near Bakhmut. “How are you? Although, perhaps, this is a stupid question, given your circumstances,” the message said. After several weeks of correspondence on the Internet, Diana came to Kramatorsk and made an offer on the first date.

Now she listened to the hoarseness of Mary saying her last goodbyes. Diana, in a panic, dialed Commander Maria's number. Fortunately, he answered the call. In a few minutes, the doctors rushed to Maria.

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Three weeks after the suicide attempt, I met Maria for the first time. In the visitors' room in the acute psychiatry department for women of a large hospital complex outside the Dnieper, she sat at a table with a plastic tablecloth, dressed in a fleece jacket with a rainbow badge, not quite understanding how she ended up here.

“I don't have a home anymore, I don't have any rights. What am I fighting for?” she asked me. Her frustration stemmed from a sense of rejection and misunderstanding on the part of her people and country, even after nearly ten years of service.

Maria volunteered for the army at the age of 22 when she saw Russia seizing Crimea and fomenting war in eastern Ukraine. Her hometown of Mariupol was briefly overrun by pro-Russian separatists, and its liberation was one of the important victories of Ukrainians in the summer of 2014. After signing the contract, she quickly noticed signs of sexism among the soldiers around her. I heard phrases like “war is not a place for women” and saw how male soldiers were perceived by commanders with greater trust and respect.

The girl wanted to prove her ability. Full of idealism, Maria fought for the right to be sent to the front. She was eventually sent to Pisky as a radio specialist as part of the 56th Brigade, where some of the fiercest battles for Donetsk airport took place.

After active duty, she remained in the Army and was stationed in her hometown as part of the 56th Brigade until the winter of 2022. It was then that Mariupol became the scene of a fierce confrontation between the encircled Ukrainian troops and the massive, dominant force of the invading Russian army. After heavy losses, her unit, along with troops from the 36th Marine Brigade and the 1st Marine Battalion, was barricaded at the Ilyich plant. They tried to break through the encirclement and leave the city. The first attempt using armored vehicles failed. The second attempt, this time on foot, was successful. They were able to bypass Russian patrols and checkpoints unnoticed and unscathed and get out of the besieged city shortly after midnight on 12 March.

There were 45 soldiers walking silently in the middle of the night. There was a difficult road ahead through the forests and steppes of Donetsk region to reach the territory controlled by Ukraine. Without mobile communication, with limited supplies and no information on exactly where the front line was, they moved through the icy darkness.

The group spent the night in abandoned houses, hunted hares and cooked chickens that were stolen from deserted farms. They split into three groups of fifteen to avoid detection — one group was later captured by the Russians. And Maria's group was spotted by Russian soldiers on the eighth day of their march as they tried to cross the river near the village of Staromayorske, a few kilometers from the Ukrainian-controlled territories at the time. There was a shootout, and Maria was wounded in her left arm. But the crossing over the river succeeded. Five hours after the battle, they reached Velika Novoselka and the Ukrainian checkpoint.

On the verge of fainting with a tourniquet on her arm, Maria was taken to the hospital. On March 21, the girl was sitting on a hospital bed, filmed on video by her friend Nastya: Maria smiled and said that she could not wait to go to the Dnieper and order takeaway food at McDonald's.

But McDonald's in Dnipro was closed, like most other establishments. The country was struggling with a large-scale invasion by a neighboring state that was eager to seize territories, and the ever-changing front line was burning. Ukraine needed her soldiers, and Maria was again sent to the front line, this time near Bakhmut in Donetsk region.

The previous experience made Maria rethink many things, and she decided to talk openly about her sexuality. Her injuries and the realization of how fragile everything around her made her no longer consider other people's opinions.

Maria confessed her homosexuality to her siblings and then began to speak publicly about her experience of being a queer person in the army. Her social media posts about life in the trenches near Bakhmut attracted the attention of both supporters and critics.

Homophobic comments and messages piled up and overwhelmed her so much that they led to depression. The girl's vulnerability due to her recent experience in Mariupol, the camming out and returning to the front pushed her to attempt suicide. “I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't even want to try...” she said.

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Having received Diana's support, Maria recovered little by little and was recently transferred to the 47th Brigade. She now serves on the Eastern Front, but took a vacation to visit Kiev Pride. The day before the Pride march in Kyiv, she met a group of young people, mostly teenagers, holding posters in support of “traditional values” and began a discussion with them, filming herself on video. The next day during Pride, she held her fiancé's hand, disregarding everyone who disapproved of her way of loving someone.

When the speeches were over and the flags and posters were rolled up, the crowd began to disperse. No more than five blocks away, on Khreshchatyk Street, several hundred people — mostly young men in black T-shirts and hoodies — came out of another gathering in support of “traditional values”. Upon learning about the location of the Pride, they ran and tried to break into the Pride participants, clashing with the police. These young men did not care that they were going to fight with people who were actively defending their country.

Before the war, most Ukrainians generally had disapproving views of homosexual unions, but polls show that public opinion changed significantly during the full-scale invasion. The latest poll, conducted by the National Democratic Institute and published in February 2024, found that more than 70 percent answered positively to the question: “Should LGBTQ+ people have the same rights as others?” In 2019, this figure was less than 30%.

However, Ukrainian legislation lags far behind. Despite years of campaigning by various human rights and LGBTQ+ organizations, as well as pressure from the EU, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has still not passed laws on hate crimes, which include acts against gay or transgender people. In addition, no homosexual union is recognized by law, and the Constitution of Ukraine defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Inna Sovsun, a 39-year-old People's Deputy of Ukraine from the Voice party, is trying to solve the most pressing problem for homosexual couples during the war, especially those who serve, to pass a law that would give them the same rights that, according to Ukrainian laws, would traditionally be married a couple. One of the most pressing needs of LGBTQ+ servicemen in wartime in Ukraine is the basic legal recognition of their partners or spouses as family members.

Currently, a homosexual couple, or any other non-heterosexual couple, has no legal rights as a unit. For military families, this is of particular importance in cases of death, disappearance, captivity or serious injury. Your partner, from the point of view of the law, is a stranger to you and therefore cannot make the legal, medical, posthumous or other decisions that a heterosexual partner would have at the time of crisis.

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The draft law number 9103 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in March 2023, but has not yet reached a vote in the parliament hall. He went through several important stages, receiving the approval of the Minister of Justice and the Department of Defense. However, a year and a half from the date of registration, it is still not clear when this bill will be put to a vote, if at all. For now, he seems hopelessly stuck in the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, which must give the bill a legal assessment and decide whether to refer it to parliament, another committee, or reject it altogether.

Inna Sovsun wrote this bill together with lawyer Maria Klyus, whose close friend Petro Zhirukha is bisexual and serves in the Ukrainian army. Peter is part of a small group of Ukrainian servicemen who openly and publicly declare their sexual orientation.

Peter, a 28-year-old musician with a classical education, never imagined that he would end up in the army. However, he felt the need to defend his homeland from Russian aggression and volunteered to join the ranks of the Armed Forces after the start of the invasion.

At first, his sexual orientation did not cause problems, but with the advent of homophobic jokes, Peter felt that he needed to adapt his behavior to fit into his new environment. He laughed at jokes and tried to be part of the team. Once the commander said that he hoped that there were no “such people” in his unit. Peter was not well. Another time, one of the soldiers in his unit said that he would “kill a pederast” if he saw one.

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Peter's parents were unaware of his sexual orientation, as were his co-workers. But at some point, the young man got tired of hiding this part of his identity and dared to go out. “I chose this hetero mask and had to change my language, behavior... I didn't want to do that anymore,” he says. In June 2022, after four months of service, Peter confessed to the people of his unit. The reaction was bad. There were stares and whispers. The soldiers did not want to stand with him in line for a shower or sit next to him. But gradually, talk by conversation, everything changed. The soldier who said he “would kill the pederast” if he saw it, after meeting Peter, said that now he would not do so. He explained that he had never met a gay man before.

Maria Klyus, a friend of Peter and deputy of Inna Sovsun, was worried about him. Peter thought his girlfriend had lost sleep because of his coming-out. And one day Maria called Petrov and told him about the draft law that Inna and I were working on. The guy was shocked. He couldn't believe that someone was willing to do such titanic work to protect him and other LGBTQ+ representatives. Although the bill covers a broad spectrum and benefits any civil partnership, he took the gesture very personally and wanted to support it as soon as he could.

At that time, only his colleagues knew about his sexual orientation, and at first Peter planned to leave it that way. But after a telephone conversation with Maria, he decided to initiate a state petition in support of the bill. This meant putting his name on a document that would reveal his sexual orientation to everyone. “If not now, when?” he asked himself.

However, Peter did not tell his parents. Realizing the impact and publicity this gesture could have, he knew that his name would become known and did not want his parents to learn about it from the news. Peter called his father and asked to turn on the speakerphone. After a brief exchange of news, he said, “I need to tell you something very important,” and paused before saying that he liked both men and women. Mom immediately shouted, “Peter, my God, I thought someone had died!” And the father calmly said that he would always shake his hand, no matter who he liked.

Peter's heart rose. All his adult life he was afraid of this moment, and here it came - a huge stone fell from his soul.

With the help of the Non-Governmental Public Organization, he created a petition in support of the draft law No. 9103 and registered it on the President's website. Such petitions have no legal implications, but they are intended to demonstrate support from the public. After the petition gains 25,000 signatures, it goes to the desk of the president, who writes his recommendations and comments. When the petition appeared on the Internet, social media hysteria began. Peter's phone began to glow every few minutes — dozens of messages and calls with words of support, gratitude and sometimes distrust. Now Peter made a caming-out for the whole country.

“I was free,” Peter recalls at that time. The soldier who wanted to “kill the pederast” said he would sign the petition.

Army officials try to avoid the topic of LGBTQ+ rights as if it were an infectious disease, and when circumstances call for resolution of any issues regarding gay or transgender servicemen, the Department of Defense and Army representatives usually try to deny everything. The note on non-support for draft law No. 9103, which was published by the Ministry of Defense shortly after its introduction, initially stated that “information about thousands of servicemen who cannot formally formalize their relationships with same-sex partners, set forth in an explanatory note to the draft law, needs additional study due to lack of relevant data in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.”

In the course of this additional study, which many LGBTQ+ activists called clumsy and horrifying, the Department of Defense decided to conduct a study by interviewing some servicemen, in effect asking, “Are you gay?”.

“Questionnaire to explore issues of sexual orientation, the need to register civil partnerships, and issues in this specific area” — a printed form containing seven questions about gender discrimination in the unit where the respondent serves; sexual preferences in choosing a partner; and questions about whether to face a potential retrial a respondent who is in a relationship with a person of his gender, with “problems” with the inheritance if he is injured, killed or declared missing.

Maxim was one of the servicemen who received this questionnaire. From the way he described the questioning process, a picture emerges of a lack of education, empathy and elementary modesty in the people who conducted this questionnaire.

Maxim, who is not openly gay in the ranks of the Ukrainian Air Force, tells how one morning a senior officer in his unit handed out a questionnaire without any explanation. The atmosphere was such that offensive jokes were made against homosexuals. Several airlines refused to fill out the questionnaire. Later, Maxim saw one questionnaire lying on the table, in large letters it was written “I AM NOT A PEDIC”. The officer returned later to collect the questionnaires, sometimes he would look into these questionnaires, taking them from the pilots. “It was a mockery of anonymity,” Maxim recalls. Later, the same officer returned with several additional questionnaires, claiming that they had to be completed to comply with the norm. Quite a few aviators were absent — they were injured or went on leave — and the command demanded an exact number of questionnaires. “Who wants to help with a test for homosexuality?” the officer asked.

It is unclear what the further fate of this survey was and whether it led to any results. The body responsible for equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Department of Humanitarian Support of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, did not respond to numerous attempts to contact them about this article. After talking with four Ministry staff, none of whom wanted to speak openly, and after looking through Ministry documents online, I found no official program dedicated to combating discrimination against LGBTQ+ personnel or educating servicemen on LGBTQ+ issues. The Department of Defense has a hotline for sexual assault and violence in general, as well as mechanisms for dealing with it.

An openly gay Defense Department employee, who also did not want to speak openly, said those responsible for equality and gender issues often lack basic knowledge of everything that goes beyond the Department's guidelines.

At the same time, the same person told me that they understand that there are much more pressing issues for the country in the face of war, and if the problem for the Armed Forces is not critical enough and does not need an urgent solution, it is often pushed to the background.

Issues regarding the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine have already created certain problems for the current government. Recent solutionsThe European Court of Human Rights has dealt with two Ukrainians, Andriy Maimulakhin and Andriy Markiv, who claimed that the Ukrainian government denied them the same rights as heterosexual couples. The couple has been living together since 2010, but has not been able to register as a household. According to their filing, they tried to register as a couple seven times, but all applications were rejected. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, Mr. Maimulakhin joined the National Guard and served a year before retiring due to health problems.

Ukrainian judge in the European Court of Justice Mykola Hnatovsky voted in favor of the plaintiffs. For its justification, the Ukrainian government used draft law No. 9103, claiming that Ukraine is already implementing the necessary laws to protect same-sex couples. However, the court rejected this argument, noting that the bill had not yet become law. The decision of the European Court of Justice is now a serious problem for the Ukrainian government. In addition to the compensation they have to pay the couple, this is now a serious challenge on the way to their desired EU membership.

But there was a long distance from the Brussels courts to the Kiev government corridors and to the dirty trenches near Avdiivka. While lawmakers, generals and judges weigh in, LGBTQ+ Ukrainians who serve face not only a lack of recognition from the law, but also serious discrimination. Their stories and personal suffering often fade into the abyss of endless death and destruction that shakes the country every day. “It's not in time,” says social media comments from critics. “This is not in time,” the lawmakers in the Legal Policy Committee repeat, according to the minutes of the last meetings on the draft law No. 9103 in July 2024. Despite the fact that the bill has been under consideration for more than a year, it has not yet been voted on.

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But for such people, the personal traumas of a lack of recognition or respect for their personality are extremely relevant. In addition, these questions are constantly present.

Gennady Aprozimov, a 25-year-old bisexual Belarusian and soldier of the International Legion, crossed the Ukrainian border on a warm July night in 2020. He had documents proving that he had entered the country for a medical procedure. After packing a small number of items—slippers, shampoo, and a few pairs of linen—he took only one backpack with him.

Five days ago, when Gennady was at home in Minsk, he was called from the nearest police station and asked to appear for a “friendly conversation”. He knew what it meant. Several of his friends who attended such talks received threats of imprisonment if they continued any “recidivist” activities, and some have already been imprisoned.

Belarusian authorities have stepped up pressure on any form of opposition after prolonged anti-government protests in the country this summer, throwing activists behind bars one by one. Journalists, students, doctors and college professors were detained in their apartments or on the street, starting with those who were most visible.

Gennady was an active participant in the protests, and in several social media posts he was mentioned as an organizer; the guy knew what role the Belarusian authorities had already prepared for him. Therefore, he collected a bag and with the help of BYSOL, an organization that helped Belarusian dissidents leave the country, went to Kiev.

The new home approached Gennady. A few months later, he stopped being afraid of black trucks and people in police uniform. He found a place to live and continued his activist activities from Kyiv. The guy surrounded himself with people from the diaspora, which grew significantly after the new wave of repression in Belarus. “I continued to fight for Belarus,” he says of that period in Kyiv.

But Gennady did not plan to fight for Ukraine. The Ukrainian government continued to flirt with the Lukashenko dictatorship, and although many Belarusian expatriates ended up in Kiev seeking protection from the regime, it was not safe here. Visa-free regime and soft security allowed Russian and Belarusian intelligence services to operate virtually unhindered in Kiev. In August 2021, one of the most active Belarusian activists, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a forest not far from his home. The death was classified as a homicide and the crime has not yet been discovered. In 2022, Denis Stadzhi, a Belarusian journalist critical of the Belarusian regime who had lived in Ukraine since 2018, was beaten, scalped and drugged over several days in his own apartment in Kiev. When Denis stopped answering his wife's calls, she arrived in Kiev from their family shelter in western Ukraine and found him unconscious, bound and wrapped in plastic bags, steps away from death. Their apartment was turned upside down and their electronic media was stolen. Belarussian agents were suspected, but Ukrainian police did not arrest anyone in connection with the attack and torture.

Gennady saw the war in Ukraine as the beginning of the liberation of Belarus. In March 2023, he enrolled in the International Legion, motivated in part by the thought that he would gain experience to continue the struggle to liberate Belarus from dictatorship when the time came. After three months of training, he was sent to the northern border with Russia, and then he joined the fighting on the Eastern Front.

Gennady has been open with people about his sexual orientation. This has caused problems in the past — especially conflicts with his religious family. But within the structure of the army, he felt that it was dangerous to talk openly about this side of his life. The composition of the International Legion is mostly foreign volunteers, mostly Americans and Europeans, who on average have more progressive views, with Ukrainian commanders who are much more conservative and, according to Gennady, sometimes openly homophobic. “I try to avoid this topic altogether,” the guy told me, “I don't want to be shot in the back.”

It seems like an overly dramatic fear, but in an environment accustomed to violence and where homophobia is common, being gay is a real threat. In war, you rely on the person next to you for your well-being and often to preserve your own life.

So, in addition to being courageous and setting an example, for a serviceman who is open about his sexual orientation, this often means carrying a target on his back.

When Gennady was transferred to a new post in December 2023, the new deputy commander of the battalion noticed a patch on his uniform with a unicorn — the symbol of the association “Ukrainian LGBT+-Military for Equal Rights”, and asked him: “What kind of crap is this on your clothes?”

Gennady refrained from commenting. His life depended on the decisions that this commander would make in the future.

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Unicorn patches have become a unifying symbol and an identifying mark of the LGBT+ community among the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They were made by the association “Ukrainian LGBT Military for Equal Rights” — a non-governmental organization that fights for the rights of queer members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, both open and hidden. It has about 400 members, of which less than a quarter are open. Viktor Pylypenko, the founder of the organization and the first openly gay man in the Ukrainian army, is at the forefront of protecting those who have decided to open up and those who are not yet ready to do so.

These stripes do not carry any specific meaning, other than indicating openness about their sexual orientation. However, they open doors for both allies and homophobes. By wearing such stripes on their uniforms, these soldiers take a certain level of risk of becoming a target.

“I know there are gays in the military who are not interested in joining our group, perhaps because they don't know about us or don't want the potential unwanted publicity,” Victor says. Being outspoken himself, he received numerous public attacks, mostly from representatives of conservative groups, right-wing organizations, commentators, as well as members of the clergy.

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The most recent scandal was the revocation of an award that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church presented to several members of Victor's unit from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade for “self-sacrifice and love for Ukraine,” and then revoked the medal, stating that Filaret “did not know about sinful tendencies” one of the winners. Then it was stated that “Patriarch Filaret and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, without exception, take a fundamentally negative position on the sin of Sodom and condemn the propaganda of so-called same-sex marriages.” After this ignominious turn with the medal, several members of the 72nd Brigade returned the award, most with sharp public criticism of the church.

This is not the first and probably not the last case of misunderstandings and tensions due to divisions in Ukrainian society on LGBTQ+ issues. Victor became a target not only for domestic critics, but also for Russian propaganda, which has a habit of portraying homosexuality as one of the poisonous fruits of the sinister Western world.

In the summer of 2021, even before the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the rhetoric of Olga Skabeeva, a Russian propagandist and commentator on Russian TV, made a special impression when she announced in her program that “President Vladimir Zelensky, on the advice of American leader Joe Biden It sends “columns of Ukrainian homosexuals to Donbas”. This was based on an earlier statement on the Facebook page of the association “Ukrainian LGBT Military for Equal Rights”, which said: “We invite motivated LGBTQ+ people, servicemen, specialists, as well as people friendly to the LGBTQ+ community who want to sign the contract. act with one of the motorized rifle units of the Armed Forces”.

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The announcement was immediately picked up by right-wing and conservative forces in Ukraine and ended up on Russian television. This is how a completely fictional story about the “Unicorn Battalion” arose.

Viktor was again harshly criticized in Ukraine as an “agent of the Kremlin”, which at the same time added fuel to the fire of Moscow's continuous propaganda machine. Neither the “Unicorn Battalion” nor an LGBT-friendly company were created, but Victor continued his fight. He recalls the words of one commander with whom he served, who told him, “If homosexuals form their part and call it a unicorn battalion, then I will accept them.” In response to criticism and fiction, a logo of the LGBT Military (LGBT Military) was created, depicting a unicorn.

Victor's struggle is part of the struggle of the other members of the union. One of the most striking was the case of the former sailor Pavel Lagoyda.

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Pavlov is 23 years old, and now he lives in Kiev. The boy is one of the most active members of the LGBT Military Union, but, like Viktor, he was persecuted and repressed for his openness. Like Victor, he suffered because of his desire to be open.

After his mother excluded Paul from the family because of his coming-out, the guy joined the Navy. This happened in September 2021, when he was only 19. The Great War Happened Over Ukraine. A few months later, as rockets rained down on towns and villages across the country, his mother called Pavlov: “I accept you as you are,” she said, crying, “just come home alive.” Paul wondered why it was the war and his service that made his mother appreciate him and accept him, but now Paul had to go to war.

According to Paul, problems with his commander, Lieutenant Major Leonid Bondarenko, began shortly after he learned about the boy's sexual orientation. Paul said that he was exposed by other sailors in his cabin when he left his phone unlocked and open for correspondence with his ex. Returning to the cabin, the guy saw his colleagues, they laughed. “So you, damn it, p**ar?” one of them smiled at Paul.

Soon everyone learned about it, including his immediate superiors. Lieutenant Bondarenko not only allowed other soldiers to beat Paul, but also became an offender himself. At first it was in the form of taunts about his sexuality and verbal harassment, but later it developed into physical violence.

The first beating occurred during a night duty in the spring of 2022, when Lieutenant Bondarenko approached Paul and verbally read him for looking at his phone. Pavel says that a quarrel broke out between them, Lieutenant Bondarenko knocked him to the floor and beat him. A second beating occurred later, in November, in front of witnesses — this time over an argument over the best way to unload the truck. Bondarenko's command could not ignore this and transferred Paul, but did not punish Bondarenko.

The correspondence between Paul and his commander is unstable. Mr. Bondarenko calls Paul a “sociopath” and says he should be studied for medical journals because of his “illness.” Paul responds with profane language and threats to sue him and the part. The conversation then goes into an even tone in discussing reports and issues of transfer and demobilization. Messages and calls remain unanswered, first from Paul, then from Mr. Bondarenko.

Judging by the phone and paper conversations between them, it seems that Mr. Bondarenko does not want Paul to go anywhere, and enjoys his power over his subordinate, inflicting regular subtle torture on him. He sends him to meaningless tasks, to various medical and psychological examinations, but does not allow him to transfer or change the contract. Paul says he was referred for two psychiatric examinations, where doctors without examination established a diagnosis that classified him as “unfit for active duty.” Lieutenant Bondarenko says that psychiatric evaluations are not his initiative, they were carried out independently, as sailor Lagoyda tried to transfer to the contract service and change the unit.

Pavel later filed an appeal through the Ministry of Defense and was sent for examination in Kiev, where the decision was overturned and the boy was declared healthy and fit for active duty. Paul's lawyer confirms his story.

Lieutenant Bondarenko claims that he never saw the final diagnosis of the psychiatric evaluation Paul received after the appeal, although in private correspondence with Paul he admits to having seen the results, while accusing Paul of being fake.

Lieutenant Bondarenko also told me that the sailor Lagoyda was a bad and rebellious soldier, and he was beaten not for being gay, but for his general attitude and behavior. The lieutenant also accused a subordinate of having sex for money with other sailors. He did not deny that he had beaten him.

In the spring of 2024, President Zelensky signed a law allowing the demobilization of all conscripts who began compulsory service by February 2024. Paul at this time unsuccessfully tried to change the part. He took advantage of the opportunity and filed for dismissal. A month later, leaving his base, he showed the middle finger. He freed himself from the tyrant.

Bullying, stalking, and even physical violence are not uncommon in the military. In many cases, the fate of a vulnerable person under someone's command depends on how the commander handles the situation. In the absence of LGBTQ+ education among the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it often boils down to whether the commander will allow abuses or, as in Paul's case, commit them himself.

But this is not always the case.

Alexander Zhugan, 39, and Antonina Romanova, 38, met on a clear and warm September day in 2014. One of those autumn days when you are still trying to catch the last shades of the missing summer. It was a different era in Ukraine. This was evidenced by the fact that they met through a Russian dating site, which was still quite popular in Ukraine even as Crimea was annexed and the war in eastern Ukraine had already begun.

Antonina recently moved to Kyiv from Crimea, where, after actively participating in pro-Ukrainian protests, she was placed on arrest lists. One of her activist friends, Oleg Sentsov, advised her to leave the peninsula. She did so, while Oleg stayed, and was later arrested and jailed for five years on fabricated terrorism charges.

Alexander was not in a festive mood that evening. He was returning from a meeting where he comforted a friend because his child had been diagnosed with a complicated form of autism. Antonina was dressed in an old-fashioned knitted jacket over a sweater. Alexander thought she had a funny look. They walked around with large glasses of takeaway food, drank latte and talked. As it turned out, they have something in common: children with disabilities, their indifference to the broken infrastructure of Kiev and their love for theater and art. They talked about Antonina's difficult childhood, the numerous operations she underwent as a child, and her journey from her lost home in Crimea to the capital. They sat next to a group of teenagers admiring their music from a portable speaker. They took the last subway home.

Ten years later, Antonina and Alexander share a room in an abandoned house a few kilometers from the active front. It was a long journey from their first date on that warm Kiev evening. Behind them are the experimental theater troupe they started, the plays and plays they put on together and separately, the endless parties and the long nights after the premiere. Their life was rich: teaching, speaking, love. They got a small apartment together and were happy.

From this apartment, they called their actors to cancel the performance on February 24 in the winter of 2022.

The Great War came into their lives. That night Antonina asked, “Shall we join?” and Alexander reluctantly agreed. The next day, they signed their names in the letters of volunteers in the local territorial defense. There were men and women of all ages — some looking as if they had come straight from work; some brought their belongings in a suitcase, a stocky man in a cowboy hat, and one guy brought a hunting rifle.

Looking at this heterogeneous audience, Alexander thought, “If they can do it, so can we.”

The fear of not being understood certainly was. “I thought: there will be these combat butchers, and I will be a little theater teacher,” Alexander says. But to their surprise, their status as a queer couple was perceived with understanding. They have been open since the beginning of their service, and rumors have spread. By the time they were sent south after the Kiev campaign, their commanders and comrades already knew that “these gays” were serving with them.

At the end of May 2022, their company was sent to Nikolaev. Antonin and Alexander were reported to the morning line, where a new senior sergeant was introduced. “I know there are gays among you,” he quipped. Antonina's heart fell. “I don't care! If you are good soldiers, there will be no problems.” He added: “I will not tolerate any discrimination.”

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Without an official policy on same-sex couples from the Department of Defense, such issues remain at the discretion of lower-ranking commanders. Some, like that senior sergeant, see this as a potential problem among their staff and put everything in their place from the start, but more often than not it falls on the shoulders of people like Alexander and Antonina to educate their fellow service members on LGBTQ+ issues.

“It's not our job to teach them,” Alexander says. But when he starts talking about the LGBTQ+ community online, he faces criticism, often from the military, that he uses his form to promote LGBTQ+ values. And it annoys him. “I would have a much broader platform somewhere else to fight for equal rights,” Alexander says, “and my goal in the army is the same as everyone else here: to win this war.”

Thus, each individual experience is distinct and depends on the education and biases of the commander. Antonini and Alexander were lucky at every stage of their service. In June 2022, they were presented with a new commander, who asked Antonina what pronouns he should use when addressing her. “That was his first question to me,” Antonina recalls, “I was amazed.”

Antonina is a non-binary person who uses the pronouns “her/her”. She and Alexander are extremely close, although they ended their relationship about a year ago. “We were together for 10 years, went through fire and water,” says Antonina. “I am sure that I will never have a closer connection with someone else in this life.”

They sit together in a dim room as they did a decade ago on the cold asphalt, listening to teenagers play music, with latte in paper cups on that warm Kiev evening. The active front, where they were a few hours ago, is just a short drive from them. They will repeat this trip shortly after my departure, not as a couple, lovers or old friends, but as two servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, embarking on another mission, fighting for their country and for their right to be who they are, for themselves and for future generations. Despite the difficulties they have experienced, their love helps them to hold on. She fights for them the way they fight for their country.

Love also supported Anna Kazan throughout her life. Anna is a medic in the 47th Brigade and a person who for most of her life went against the general trend. Her call sign Bat is not just that. She likes the way this call sounds, even more so - she likes the bats themselves. Annie is now 31 years old, and she has been studying nocturnal winged creatures since she was in her early 20s — she earned a bachelor's degree in molecular biology and biotechnology and graduated with a master's degree in vertebrate zoology. She was in her 4th semester in Ghent, Belgium, studying tropical biodiversity and ecosystems when the full-scale invasion began. This event forced her to return to Ukraine and join the army, something she would never have thought of before.

If the dictionary had an illustration for a left-wing activist in Ukraine, it would probably be Anna. Since adolescence, she actively joined the left-wing movement of her native Kharkiv. She participated in the organization of Anarchist Squat (which also helped to house LGBTQ+ activists as well as displaced persons from the annexed Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine in 2014), co-founded Kharkiv Pride, an organization that defends LGBTQ+ rights in Ukraine, and participated in the organization of the first Prize I will be in Kharkov in 2019.

That first Pride was a turning point in her life. On Svobody Square in the center of Kharkiv, she stood among about 2,000 other activists who came to support the event. Around them were police in shields and a number of trucks separating them from another group of people — right-wing activists from various organizations, including Freikorps, the National Corps and Tradition and Order. “Every Pride these right guys use as a training event,” Anna says with a bit of black humor. “They get together, meet, have fun and show what they are capable of.”

And that day they were capable of a lot of violence. They clashed with police and LGBTQ+ activists, one teenager was seriously injured in a nearby park, and several people were arrested. This made waves in the Ukrainian media, the US Embassy in Ukraine issued a statement of condemnation, and Amnesty International wrote a public statement.

Four years later, when Anna was already in the 47th Brigade, she met Kostya, who served in her medical unit. Kostya was also on Freedom Square in 2019, only he was on the other side of the barricades. Fascinated by right-wing views, he was part of the Freikorps, a radical right group that fought with the police that day and hunted down parade-goers. Kostya and Anna talked, trying to keep a safe distance. These conversations have become regular. Kostya was an intellectual who wrote poetry, a stark contrast to other right-minded people Anna had met in her life through service.

Once, trying to summarize one of these conversations, Kostya pointed to a battle map hanging on the wall of their medical headquarters. “That's the only thing that matters now,” he said.

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They discussed the incident with one of the founders of Kharkiv Pride, Anna Sharygina, who publicly spoke out against renaming a street in Kharkiv in honor of Georgy Tarasenko, who was a member of the Freikorps and died during fighting near Kharkiv in March 2022. Then Sharygina wrote on Facebook that Tarasenko was a well-known right-wing figure and had violently persecuted LGBTQ+ activists several times. Her post also raised the question of who should be the people Ukrainians perpetuate in the pantheon of heroes of this war, and what can be written off or forgiven for those who give their lives to defend the country.

It was a subtle post that provoked a lively but complex discussion, filled with hate and threats, as well as words of support for Ms. Sharigina. It is easy to understand her motivation — people like Georgy Tarasenko were a threat to her. He wasn't just against same-sex marriage or equal rights for LGBTQ+ people — he was violent, he persecuted her and the people she fought for. But Georgy Tarasenko also died fighting the Russians who invaded their city to occupy it and make it part of Russia, where any LGBTQ+ activity is now criminalized.

In wartime Ukraine, the army became a reflection of Ukrainian society itself; it is a country within a country — with all its difficulties and internal conflicts, many voices and camps. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life have volunteered, been mobilized and drafted over the past two and a half years. And just like in Ukrainian society, in the Armed Forces of Ukraine LGBTQ+ people are a minority — a minority that is easier to bully and discriminate, but which needs to be protected.

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Anna Kazhan did not agree with the Facebook post of her former colleague, with whom they organized Kharkiv Pride in 2019. But she knows what it's like to be threatened, criticized, and argue because of who she is. Recently, she was in a car with another supporter of far-right ideology on the way to the medical base of the Azov unit. Her ex-girlfriend worked there and organized the visit. Anna joked that this LGBT community brings the far right to the base of “Azov”. They talked about issues and values. They argued and joked.

“At the next Pride, we're going to drop a drone charge on you,” the right-hand guy said, laughing. “We will install silencers,” Anna replied. And then there was silence. They both knew they might not make it to the next Pride. They kept going.

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Material created with support The Free Word Foundation.

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The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Sasha Maslov
Translation: Marusya Maruzhenko
Literary Editor: Julia Foutei
Site Manager: Vladislav Kuhar

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Sasha Maslovwas born in Kharkov. He lives and works in New York. His works have been presented at various venues in Europe and the United States. Collaborates with well-known publications, including The NewYorker, Guardian, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Forbes and others. In his free time, he is engaged in his personal projects, the largest of which today is the project “Veterans”, for which in 5 years the photographer has visited more than 20 countries of the world.

Sasha's social networks: Facebook, Instagram