What annoys you the most?

It’s annoying when friends tell me that no one forced me to join the army. It bothers me that the payouts for a gay soldier’s death go to his mother, who hasn’t spoken to him in 15 years.* But this guy had a family, and his partner and child get nothing (if the child isn’t legally registered with him). It’s not okay with me that the partners of gay or lesbian individuals can’t enter the intensive care unit to find out what’s happening with them. They’ll only allow relatives. You have to be a spouse to know about your partner. If there are injured soldiers, their partners may spend a long time searching for them in hospitals.

Our army isn’t totally composed of career soldiers who joined the military to serve; these are people who came voluntarily to fight. Hundreds of thousands of individuals who simply came from society to protect their loved ones and their homes. So, it’s just a reflection of society. I wouldn’t say that our society is homophobic that much. Stereotypes about women and feminists annoy me. It’s frustrating when people say that women don’t belong to the army. I then ask what he does with his gun that I can’t do. And usually, the questions disappear. Now, a whole unit of people serves with an openly bisexual person and me. And all these people are gradually changing their stereotypes about the LGBTQIA+ community. They can’t help but do this because most of these stereotypes were based on ignorance. But now, they personally know these LGBTQIA+ people; they sleep, eat, and fight with them, so they simply have no choice but to change their stereotypes. However, I serve in the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), and here, many volunteers from the creative class had no stereotypes to begin with.

I don’t have a vision of post-war Ukrainian society. I would like not to die tomorrow as well as my co-fighters not to die tomorrow. And that’s my planning horizon.

Positive changes

There are some positive changes in society that are shifting attitudes towards the LGBTQIA+ community thanks to openly LGBTQIA+ individuals in the military. However, I think not so many people actually see them. What has a greater impact is that we are actively moving away from the Russian mentality, from Russian narratives. Many people want to align themselves with democratic European values and understand that among these values is respect for diversity. They comprehend, or at least feel, that homophobia is one of the key foundations of Russian unity, Russian culture. And they don’t want to be like that.

Under our laws, LGBTQIA+ couples absolutely do not have the same protection as other couples. And that’s unfair because LGBTQIA+ military personnel stand for the rest of the nation. I would like the other part of the population, which is not currently in the war, to stand for these military personnel and veterans so that they have the same rights, guarantees, and fair benefits.

*At the state level, the law on registered partnerships in Ukraine has been under discussion since 2015. However, it was during the war that a plan of action for the implementation of the National Human Rights Strategy for 2021-2023 was agreed upon. As part of this, as of December 2023, the introduction of the institution of registered civil partnership, including for same-sex couples, has been approved.