“If someone had snitched that we are LGBTQI, we would have been shot for sure,” says Svetlana. Svetlana and her female partner have escaped Bucha, a Ukrainian town tragically known for brutalities committed by Russian occupants. “When we got out, and, at last, saw our guys [Ukrainian soldiers], our flags… I think I’ve only ever felt that happy when my grandson was born.”
Svetlana and Alina, an older lesbian couple, have been living together for five years. Before the war they had a cosy home of their own. They had breakfasts in their backyard and listened to larks singing. “We loved romance,” Svetlana remembers. In the beginning of February when Russia invaded Ukraine, the couple was split apart. “When the war started, I was visiting my parents in Kyiv,” Alina remembers. “Public transport wasn’t working, so I went back to Svetlana by foot – that’s over 20km. They didn’t want to let me through a military checkpoint and told me that’s not allowed, there is fighting going on, it’s very dangerous. I had to cheat: I told them I live just around the corner, and only need to cross the bridge. I got through one checkpoint like that, and did the same at the next one – they checked me against the database, but let me through. I remember climbing the bridge and seeing broken military equipment and dead Russian soldiers.
And I just went through them, I was trying not to look, and to just step over them.”
At first, Svetlana and Alina didn’t want to
