When Maryna Lemishenko and her partner arrived in Kyiv in 2015 they had just Hr 3,000 — around $130 at the time — and two bags between them.
When Russian-backed militants seized the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in 2014, the couple had packed their belongings and fled to Lemishenko’s hometown, the nearby city of Izyum, to wait out the occupation.
But nearly a year later, the war in eastern Ukraine showed no sign of ending and the pair were running out of savings. Unable to find steady employment in the small city, they decided to try their luck in Kyiv. There, they were able to build a new life thanks to a shelter for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people fleeing parts of the country occupied by Russia.
Opened by the LGBTQ non-governmental organization Insight in 2014, it became the first shelter for LGBTQ people in Ukraine. But this September, it officially shut its doors after a long struggle with funding.
The project’s coordinator, Olga Olshanskaya, said western donors stopped funding the shelter in 2016, but the organization had been keeping it open by redirecting money from other projects — something they can no longer afford to do.
In the five years since it opened, the shelter has been a temporary home to 115 people, many fleeing the war like Lemishenko.
Russia’s war against Ukraine, including its occupation of eastern Ukrainian territories and Crimea, has forced at least 1.4 million people to leave their homes and move to other parts of Ukraine. Some 13,000 people were killed in the war, a quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
Growing homophobia
When Russian and Russian-backed forces invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014, life became harder for millions of Ukrainians. But LGBTQ people found themselves in an even more difficult and dangerous situation. The values of the modern Russian state, shared by the militants, included intolerance for same-sex relationships.
Homophobia intensified in eastern Ukraine, according to “Violation of LGBTI Rights in Crimea and Donbas,” a report by Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial and Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian non-profit.
“Violence against LGBTI people became the norm and was encouraged by representatives of (the self-proclaimed) government structures,” the report stated.
Lemishenko said the presence of armed vigilante groups was very frightening for LGBTQ people in Donetsk.
“Everyone tried not to walk around holding hands — I’m speaking about me and my friends — so as not to draw attention to themselves and not to stand out because we didn’t know how they would react to it,” she said.
According to the report, the Russia-backed militants controlling wide swaths of Luhansk Oblast proposed introducing the death penalty for gay sex. In Donetsk Oblast, the insurgents wrote a ban on same-sex relations into their self-proclaimed “constitution.” The death penalty was never adopted and the ban on same-sex relations was later removed from the “constitution,” but both territories have adopted laws similar to Russia’s gay propaganda law, the report states. Activists say homophobia remains rife in the region.
In June 2014, a group of armed men stormed Babylon, a gay club in Donetsk. After that, the venue closed.
Lemishenko said the LGBTQ community went into hiding.
“They started meeting people less, online and otherwise, because they understood they could be set up,” she said. “If people talk about (LGBTQ issues), then it’s at home, in the kitchen.”
Lemishenko said she knew her and her partner needed to leave after Russia-backed militants stormed Donetsk airport and the first battle for that critical transport infrastructure erupted in late May 2014.
“The suburb where we lived wasn’t far from the airport at that time. I was at home, my partner was at work and I saw the airplanes flying overhead.
I was trying to call her but there was no connection. I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
“I just took money, documents and the cat and I stood in the middle of the street and just hoped that everything was okay with her.”
About two months later, the couple left for Izyum, then nearly a year later, for Kyiv.
Discrimination
As of September 2019, the Ukrainian government had some 1.4 million people registered as internally displaced as a result of the war in the Donbas and the occupation of Crimea. But while numerous organizations mobilized to help internally displaced families, there was initially nothing to specifically aid LGBTQ people overcome the additional discrimination they faced fleeing the conflict, Olshanskaya said.
When the war began, LGBTQ residents of the conflict-affected areas — particularly transgender people — started reaching out to them for help.
Many faced problems because their physical appearance did not match their documents. That often left them unable to cross the checkpoints separating occupied and government-controlled territory. It also created difficulties finding housing and work.
“If they want to work, they have to find jobs that don’t require qualifications — like at a petrol station or as a waiter,” Olshanskaya said. “If a person studied for a particular qualification, they often can’t find work in that field.”
Insight was able to secure funding from Western donors to open a shelter, but then ran into problems while looking for an apartment to house internally displaced LGBTQ people.
“People would hang up and not speak with us,” Olshanskaya said.
After weeks of searching, the organization found an apartment in the suburbs of Kyiv and opened the shelter in June 2014. In addition to free accommodations, Insight also provided free basics such as food, travel expenses, and psychological and legal aid.
The four-room apartment was set up to house around half a dozen people for an average of three months. However, those struggling to find work and accommodations were able to stay longer, and sometimes up to nine people would live in the shelter at the same time.
Around 2016, the flow of people from the occupied territories slowed and the organization opened the shelter up to LGBTQ people from all over the country who had found themselves in difficult situations.
For Chris Brilling, a genderqueer activist, the shelter provided an opportunity to rebuild his identity after escaping a 13-year abusive relationship in Dnipro.
“He didn’t hit me often, but the psychological abuse was happening every day,” the 34-year-old said. “I tried to escape many times but it never worked because he would talk me out of leaving.”
Brilling was also forced to hand over monthly earnings to his former partner, which made leaving financially difficult.
In January, Brilling kept his last paycheck and fled to Kyiv, where a few weeks later he was offered a space at the shelter. He said this gave him the financial freedom to rediscover his identity while he searched for a flat.
“I could allow myself to get a manicure, I was able to afford to go to a sale and buy some new, beautiful things, and in this way create a new image, a new identity…or reinstate it.”
He said living with other LGBTQ people also helped.
“There were two trans guys and two lesbians and this was encouraging because we could talk about things we couldn’t with cisgender heterosexual people,” he said.
Brilling has since found work in marketing and an apartment but has remained a volunteer at Insight.
He said he also wanted to raise awareness about abuse in LGBTQ relationships.
“I want people to know about this more, especially about abuse in queer families because practically no one talks about this,” he said.
“People seldom talk about LGBT families, let alone that this can happen among women, among transgender partners.”
New shelter
Since announcing the shelter’s closure in July, Olshanskaya said Insight has received seven applications from people seeking a bed at the shelter.
Widespread homophobia across the country means more people will likely seek out shelter services.
Some of them could be redirected to a new shelter opened by Alliance Global in late May. But the project currently only houses men who have sex with men and transgender people.
Alliance Global’s shelter project coordinator Andrii, who asked to be identified only by first name for project safety reasons, said the organization primarily works in the sphere of HIV prevention and with at-risk groups, which include men who have sex with men (MSM). Their funding agreement for the shelter stipulates they can only currently accept MSM and transgender people.
The shelter, located in Kyiv, can house up to 15 people for one to three months — or six months in extremely tough circumstances. Residents must have suffered persecution or discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“(In August) we had a young man arrive from Lviv. His parents found out about his sexual orientation and kicked him out of the house,” Andrii said.
He said the organization, which also runs a community center, decided to open the shelter because many people who were facing difficulties and had nowhere to go were turning to them for help.
“(A couple of years ago) there was a trans woman in Chernihiv. She was bullied right on the street … and threatened, but unfortunately we couldn’t do much to help at that moment.”
Andrii said the organization can now offer those being persecuted a place to go.
But he added that one shelter in Kyiv wasn’t enough.
“I think that shelters need to exist at least in every city with (around) a million people,” he said.
“In Kyiv, there is a need for a shelter for LGBTQ women. Unfortunately, our program doesn’t cover this category but the need is there.”
