Meet The Ukraine Unicorns. 100 Days of War Clarifies What Matters; ‘LGBT Military’ Group Fights Russia, For Ukraine Gay Equality, And For Love
towleroad.comIvan Gonzyk (Credit Ivan Gonzyk / Instagram). Used with permission.LGBTQ soldiers representatives within the Ukrainian army are rarely portrayed.
In 2018, Viktor Pylypenko, an openly gay veteran of the Donbas Volunteer Battalion, decided to change that by forming LGBT Military, a union of military, veterans, and volunteers fighting for equal rights.
This piece explores how his idea came about, alongside the stories of two other soldiers from the LGBTQ+ community that the union has helped to support.Around 330,000 Ukrainians have taken part in the Ukraine government’s military operation against Russia-led militants in the east of the country since 2014, but there is no public information about how many of them are members of the LGBT military community.This is what motivated We Were Here, a Kyiv-born photography project featuring members of the Ukraine forces of diverse gender and sexual orientations.
The pictures were taken by Anton Shebetko, a Ukrainian artist and photographer who lives in Amsterdam.“The ‘We Were Here’ project aims to shine a light on the people who are on the one hand modern-day heroes of Ukrainian society and on the other, are being ignored by most of their compatriots,” Shebetko said.Most of the people in the photographs have their faces covered.
