“If I die, I’ll die as a gay man. And if I survive, I won’t hide it anymore.”
This was how Oleksandr Demenko came out to his mother. It was spring 2022, and the soldier, now aged 26, was fighting to defend the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. Russian troops were close to capturing the steel plant, and communications were about to go down. Determined not to die without telling his mother who he really was, Demenko used those final moments of contact with the outside world to call her and speak his truth.
Then, the phones were cut off. Russia seized the plant and occupied the city of Mariupol. Demenko was held captive as one of the Azovstal Defenders for 20 months, a gay prisoner of war of a regime that has banned the “LGBT movement”, labelling it “extremist”.
While many of the Azovstal Defenders remain in Russian captivity, and Mariupol is still occupied, Demenko was released as part of a prisoner exchange on 31 January 2024. Today, he heads up the LGBT Military, a non-governmental organisation based in Kyiv, whose office-turned-members’ hub openDemocracy visited on a crisp day in November.
Life for Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community has never been easy. Homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1991. As in much of the region, the constitutional definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. Ukraine is one of 15 European countries, including Georgia, Slovakia, Poland and Romania, which have no civil partnership laws. Its society is socially conservative, particularly in the rural regions, while religion underpins homophobia in its western areas. LGBTQ+ people tend to live in the major cities, such as the capital Kyiv or Odesa, both of which have held Pride marches that have previously been marred by violence.
Attitudes are slowly shifting. In August 2022, an online petition for equal marriage rights reached the 25,000-signature threshold that triggers the president's consideration. While Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded that changing the constitution would be impossible without a referendum, which is banned under martial law, he promised his government would work on a bill to legalise civil partnerships.
The following year, opposition lawmaker Inna Sovsun introduced such a bill to Parliament. Progress has since stalled, in part due to defence being prioritised over social issues and in part due to populist and openly homophobic parliamentarians, including those on the right, pushing back on rights to appease their socially conservative base.
But it is notable that the Ministry of Defence backed the move for civil partnerships. LGBT Military’s deputy leader Viktor Pylypenko told openDemocracy he has seen first-hand how support for LGBTQ+ rights is rising – not least thanks to the visibility of gay men and women in the armed forces.
The organisation opened its second branch this month, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya, with the support of global humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps. It now has 700 members, and there are even more LGBTQ+ soldiers fighting on the frontlines, whose bravery and visibility have helped to shift public support for gay rights. In 2016, only 33.4% of Ukrainians believed LGBTQ+ people should have equal rights to other citizens, a number that rose to 63.7% in 2022 and increased again to 70.4% in 2024.
Struggles remain, however. “Soldiers still face discrimination, and we encourage them to report it,” Pylypenko said. Before he became a soldier, he worked as a copywriter and project manager, signing up in 2014 to join the war in the Donbas. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, he signed up again, joining the 72nd Mechanised Brigade.
Pylypenko recognises that whether action is taken against homophobia in the Ukrainian military still largely depends on the personal attitudes of the commanders. “But by being visible and working with international partners, we can cause trouble,” he said. “The [former] minister of defence, Oleksii Reznikov, even made a statement in 2023 saying he would not allow any discrimination against LGBTQ+ soldiers after we pushed hard via our network.”
One key problem facing some LGBT Military members is access to necessary medical care.
A year into the full-scale invasion, the Ministry of Defence lifted a ban that prevented the 158,000 people in Ukraine who are registered as HIV+ from serving in the military. While anybody can get HIV, the illness has (as is often the case around the world) disproportionately impacted Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community. For soldiers who are HIV+, it’s not only bullets and rockets that leave them fearing for their lives – they can struggle to access their medication when in battle.
“It’s a problem,” said Pylypenko. “People with HIV, with hepatitis, they can be in the infantry. But there are cases where they are losing access to their therapy, and the system is not able to immediately react to that. There is a big problem in this sphere.”
But perhaps the biggest challenge for LGBTQ+ military personnel in war is the lack of legal recognition.
With no civil partnership or marriage rights for LGBTQ+ couples, Pylypenko has seen cases where “someone has been killed on the frontline, and their partner cannot receive any death in-service benefits or recognition. We had a case where a soldier was rejected by his homophobic parents. When he died, the parents claimed his flat even though his partner was living there, because they were recognised as the closest relatives by the government, not his partner.”
Olena Shevchenko, who runs feminist and LGBTQ+ rights group Insight, shares Pylypenko’s concerns that LGBTQ+ families who are not legally recognised by the state are being excluded from the protections and benefits awarded to straight couples.
“On the law level, we need at least recognition and protection, and then everything will be a little bit less heavy,” Shevchenko said when we met in Insight’s office in a historic district of Kyiv, just as the daily blackout began. The power cut for a moment, and then the loud hum of the generator kicked in, along with the lights and – thankfully – the heaters.
“Even if your partner is missing somewhere in the occupied territories or on the front line, the government will not accept your claim to look for them,” she said. “If you are not visible, you don’t exist.” The psychological impact of not being recognised as your partner’s next of kin is “quite unbearable, because you spend many years being together, and then are told that this relationship never happened”.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Insight’s long-standing work of providing advocacy and support to women and LGBTQ+ people has switched focus to delivering humanitarian aid to members of the community. But its legal work continues, with a recent court win that recognised two cohabiting men as a family. The move means Ukraine now has limited recognition for some gay partnerships, unlike many neighbouring countries.
“This is how we see advocacy towards partnerships and marriage in the future,” Shevchenko confirmed. The public response, she said, “was very good.”
Fighting for visibility
Nearly 500 kilometres away from Kyiv, on the edge of Russia’s border with Ukraine, the frontline city of Kharkiv has been under air alert for eight hours. Earlier that day, Ukrainian air defences shot down a drone headed towards a residential building.
But life goes on even as the sirens do. At the Pride Hub run by feminist and LGBTQ+ rights NGO Sphere, an event offering medical checks has just wrapped up. Sphere was set up in 2008 by a group of women to provide support to women across the Kharkiv region before extending its activism to include the LGBTQ+ community. It documents hate crimes, funds LGBTQ+ people and women’s businesses, organises events, offers a safe space for the community, and provides counselling.
Some of Sphere’s remit has changed since the start of the full-scale invasion. It now provides humanitarian aid to frontline areas, and collaborates with LGBT Military to support soldiers. The safe space has a new function: offering power banks for people to use during blackouts and a bomb shelter during the regular Russian attacks on the city.
Like Pylypenko, Sphere president and co-founder Anna Sharyhina has seen Ukrainian society become more accepting of LGBTQ+ people since the start of the full-scale invasion.
“We are more visible as a community, due to events such as Pride, so that helps reduce homophobia,” Sharyhina said. With marches banned in Kharkiv’s wartime conditions, Sphere has organised educational events at the hub and a Pride drive that saw participating cars stretching across the whole city. “We never imagined there would be such a huge line of cars!” she said.
But while the team has seen improvements in attitudes, they still face homophobia. “A group of far-right people came here from Kyiv during Pride to try and spoil the festival,” said Sharyhina. “The police cooperated with us and protected us. On another occasion, far-right groups painted a red swastika on the hub’s windows.”
There are currently no hate crime laws in Ukraine to deal with such attacks, something Sharyhina would like to see changed. However, she recognises that attitudes, along with laws, need to evolve. “It’s not only about law. It is about how police work, how prosecutors work, how court works,” she said. “When there are attacks, some in the queer community don't like to ask police for help because the police can be homophobic.”
Despite the challenges, Sharyhina is hopeful that life is improving for the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine, with Sphere playing a key role in pushing for change. “We wanted to make a place for visibility for the LGBTQ+ community,” she said. “It is a place where people can just be, not to be a victim or only a victim. And to show people that we are all human beings. I think that helps to make society less homophobic.”
It’s an optimism that Pylypenko shares. “Visibility and coming out is key,” he said. “Lots of people don't know any openly gay people or they believe there are no gay people in their surroundings. So whenever a friend of his or hers comes out, it changes things. Our guys and women are fighting; they are taking all the risks. I came out knowing that the next day could be my last day. So I had nothing to lose.”
