Viktor Pylypenko is a rare openly gay soldier in Ukraine. He lives in Kyiv and leads a group of more than 100 queer troops and veterans since the Russian invasion of the country last Friday.
Pylypenko came out in a story for the BBC in 2019 and served in active combat in 2014 during what he described as a brutal, grueling stretch of warfare when Russia annexed Crimea and aided separatists in Ukraine’s eastern region.
He told GCN he rejoined the military to defend his nation and save the LGBTQ community from Putin’s persecution.
Pylypenko:
“People are really scared that if the most dark prognosis will take place. The first thing Russia will do is rid civil society of activists — especially those who belong to the LGBTQ community and who are fighting for human rights. Human rights are the number one enemy for Putin’s regime.”
Pylypenko and others said those fears are rooted in Russia’s treatment of LGBTQ people in war-torn eastern Ukraine since 2014. Kyrylo Samozdra, another gay Ukrainian man, told Gay City News he fled from the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk in 2020 after he was interrogated and harassed by Russian authorities for his work with queer youth. LGBTQ Russians have often reported similar tactics used by the Russians to clamp down on public queer life.
Samozdra escaped to Kyiv and is now in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where he said he has heard numerous explosions since Russia launched the invasion. He feels safer now after getting in touch with a group of queer people.
“We went several times to shelters,” Samozdra told Gay City News. “It was hard when we had just arrived from the train. We didn’t sleep for 30 hours and we were forced to sit in the basement, but now everything is calm. With my queer acquaintances, we exchanged news, helped, and consoled each other. I see this war as a war of humanity and inhumanity. I am happy that the entire world has rallied against Putin and is helping Ukraine.”
Others who fear Russian occupation also recall being targeted by the homophobic Russian government. Globa and Pylypenko said Russian state media put their faces on television on multiple occasions and mocked Ukraine’s LGBTQ community.
Pylypenko found open arms when he came out despite Ukraine’s sketchy record on LGBT rights. But being a member of the military,“As defenders, we had a high level of respect from civil people, so they easily could accept our second identity — our gay identity — and through that, we created an umbrella for the whole LGBTQ community.
Members of the LGBTQ community are already at war fighting on battlefield,” Pylypenko said. As his nation was under siege on February 25, Pylypenko told Gay City News Ukrainians have scrambled to enlist in the military.
“The number of people willing to defend the country is immense,” he said. “Our brigade has enormous queues. We waited two days for our documents, uniforms, equipment, and weapons.”
When a cadre of Russian troops took hid in a basement office in Kharkiv last week. they didn’t realize that the basement was being used as the office of the LGBTQI group. According to Pylypenko, the activists beat up the soldiers and captured them. Pylypenko told the newspaper that LGBTQI people were also fighting against the Russians. “We are confronting a tyrannical, homophobic enemy,”
Says
“Our unity is our main instrument,” Pylypenko said. “We don’t have any foreign troops in Ukraine; we only have our local army. We are ready to accept any challenges.”
We will win. Ukraine’s people, joined in one Ukrainian army of equal citizens, will fight the tyranny, madness of Russian imperializm! Free and dignified people of Europe – demand from your governments to get your countries rid from the Russian corrupt money, demand hypocritic politicians which have links with the capitals of Russian oil and gas corruptioners, Putin’s clique, to stop lying to you, to say Putin should be “respected”, “understood”, say you that Ukraine “can’t be a partner of NATO” and shouldn’t be supported by lethal and defensive weapons, anti-aircraft defense systems. Politicians, who lie to you, are one who are responsible for one of the largest crimes against the humanity, which happened after WW2 in Europe. War of Russia against Ukraine started not now – it started from annexation of Crimea and hybrid intrusion to Donbas in 2014. All this time some structures were turning a blind eye at us, victimblamed Ukraine. They are also responsible for this crime and their functional principles should be revised.
I want to thank every free citizen and honest people, who are supporting us, wishing victory; I want to thank governments, presidents, ministers which give us weapons, needed supplies, diplomatic support. Putin should be brought to Hague tribunal. Ukraine should be part of NATO. War should be won and should never happen again. Peace will win
