Day: July 8, 2022

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At CIA headquarters, Biden lauds U.S. intelligence for Putin warnings

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U.S. President Joe Biden is welcomed by Central Intelligence Agency employees during his visit to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, U.S., July 8, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

LANGLEY, Va., July 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday thanked staff at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency for warning the world about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine, and hailed what he called the “quiet bravery” of America’s spies.

Marking the CIA’s 75th anniversary, Biden said he had been involved with the agency for 52 of those years, first as a junior senator on a 1975 committee set up to investigate mind control experiments and other abuses by the agency.

Intelligence gathered by the CIA had exposed Putin’s plans and allowed Washington to warn other countries about the war, he said.

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“It was thanks to the incredible work of our intelligence professionals that we were able to forewarn the world what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine,” he said. “Exposing Putin’s playbook punched a gigantic hole in the pretense, and discredited his lies about what we were doing in Ukraine.”

Before Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, as Russia massed more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, Putin repeatedly accused the United States and other Western powers of deliberately creating a scenario to lure Moscow into war.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.”

Biden’s speech was a stark contrast to that of former President Donald Trump, who made his first speech as president at the CIA headquarters, where he criticized the news media and his political opponents in front of the “wall of stars” memorializing dozens of CIA agents who died on duty.

Biden noted that two stars had been added to the wall this year. “Your physical health and well-being are critically important to me and to your leadership here at the CIA,” Biden said, in a possible reference to the Havana Syndrome, a series of anomalous health incidents that has affected some 200 U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers worldwide.

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Reporting by Jeff Mason in Langley, Va.,
Writing by Andrea Shalal
Editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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What President Putin could have learned from history

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Historical events show that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is yet another catastrophic miscalculation by a ruthless autocratic leader.

Cap of Monomakh (Putin history)The Cap of Monomakh is part of the Kremlin’s imperial narrative, but it was likely made by Mongolian – rather than Byzantine – artisans. © Getty Images

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  • Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine with spurious historical arguments
  • Many of Moscow’s go-to nationalist myths do not hold water
  • History shows that the Kremlin’s actions bode ill for Russia

Much has been said about how Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his assault on Ukraine with some incoherent ramblings about history. His main message was that Ukrainians constitute but an inferior part of the great Russian nation and that Ukraine does not have a right to exist as a state. French President Emmanuel Macron famously endured a five-hour-long session at the Kremlin’s long table, listening to this bizarre message.

But a serious reading of history reveals the opposite – a story that is highly flattering to Ukraine and shows Russia’s flaws. 

A tale of three cities: Kyiv, Novgorod and Moscow

The early history of the Eastern Slavs features neither Russians nor Ukrainians. What came to be known as Kyivan Rus’ was a construct of Swedish Vikings, also known as Varangians. Although very little is known about this state, surviving names show that its early rulers were of Norse descent: Oleg (Helge), Igor (Ingvar) and Olga (Helga). Even the name “Rus,” which later evolved into “Russian,” was Norse (as illustrated by the Finnish name for Sweden: Ruotsi).

The Norsemen’s business model was to run a protection racket along the waterways from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea, giving the scattered Slav settlements a choice between paying tribute and being raided. Tribute thus extracted was brought to Kyiv, which served as the staging post for annual trading expeditions to Constantinople. This business was so profitable that by the turn of the millennium, Kyiv was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in Europe.

The legacy of statecraft that Russia inherited from Muscovy was defined by two centuries of interaction with the Mongols.

This state of affairs ended abruptly in 1242, when Mongol hordes laid waste to the city. It would be a century or more until organized society began to reemerge. Russian nationalist myths about a tradition stemming from Constantinople to Moscow must be taken with a pinch of salt. When Kyiv was destroyed, the world had not yet heard of Moscow. Its first mention in historical sources dates to 1147, as an insignificant outpost on the Moskva River.

The implications of depicting Moscow as Kyiv’s historical successor are clear. The onslaught of the “Mongol Storm” scattered the Eastern Slavs, and some did migrate toward what would become Muscovy. But what they brought with them had little to do with statecraft, or even with Orthodox Christianity.

Legacy from Kyivan Rus’

The famous “baptism” of Kyiv took place in 988, under Vladimir the Great. It took some time until the new religion crowded out local pagan beliefs, and then it was disrupted by the Mongols. Orthodoxy was brought to Muscovy in earnest only in the 15th century, not by Kyivans but Orthodox monks from Serbia and Bulgaria fleeing invading Turks.

The legacy of statecraft that Kyiv could have passed on to Muscovy was limited to market development. Kyivan Rus’ was a quasi-state whose princes were mainly focused on enhancing their trading operations. And Muscovy was a warrior state with little interest in trade. The assertion that Russian statehood dates back to Kyiv is therefore highly unconvincing. The legacy of statecraft that Russia inherited from Muscovy was rather defined by two centuries of interaction with the Mongols.

NovgorodThe medieval state of Novgorod, which thrived from the 12th to the 15th century, had a democratic governance system long before most of Europe. © Getty Images

It was under the Mongol Yoke that Muscovy developed its distinctive form of autocratic governance. It was based on a form of political slavery that required even the most senior nobles to prostrate themselves before the Grand Prince.

They were allowed to engage in massive corruption, but keeping the loot was conditional upon blind loyalty. Given that the Mongols required Muscovite princes to offer their eldest sons as hostages, after a couple of generations, all Muscovite rulers would have spent their youth at the Mongol court in Sarai and would have known no other form of governance. This led to the emergence of the Mongol-Muscovite warrior state.

One legacy that Muscovy did import from Kyivan Rus’ was sedentary agriculture. While this form of sustenance made much sense in the fertile southern steppe, in the dark and barren forests of Muscovy it was a poison pill. Before the arrival of the Slavs, the local population were hunter-gatherers. The transition to slash-and-burn agriculture was a historic mistake. Combined with serfdom and the absence of rights to property, it would have serious long-term consequences.

By the time the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, Russian agriculture had still not achieved productivity levels of at least four grains harvested for one planted – which is deemed necessary for an economic takeoff. When Joseph Stalin embarked on mass industrialization, his solution was to use brutal violence against the peasants, causing death and destruction, including a politically induced “terror-famine” in Ukraine, the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

The fall of Novgorod

While Muscovy was being consolidated as an underdeveloped autocratic warrior state, Novgorod was thriving. Located at the northern end of Viking trade routes, known as the “road from the Varangians to the Greeks,” it was a trading state that interacted with the German Hanseatic League, exporting furs, wax, honey and other products of the forest. Its expanse stretched around and to the east of Moscow.

When Kyiv was annihilated by the Mongols, Novgorod was spared for unknown reasons. As a result, it could further develop its institutions of accountable government and rules-based market economy. The state was governed by a council that guaranteed contracts and property rights. It was unique in Europe in that women’s property rights were also secured. 

Muscovy evolved as an autocratic warrior state that recognized no constraints on the ruler nor any rights to property for his underlings.

But the tragedy that befell Kyiv also eventually came down on Novgorod. Bent on conquest and expropriation, the rulers of Muscovy decided that Novgorod must be destroyed, and in 1470, Grand Prince Ivan III launched the first in a long series of attacks. The final cataclysm arrived in 1570, when Tsar Ivan the Terrible personally led his Black Guards, the dreaded oprichniki, in an assault that resulted in the bulk of the population of Novgorod being either killed or deported. Lands that were thus made vacant were conditionally granted to servants of the Muscovite ruler.

This cemented the evolution of Muscovy as an autocratic warrior state that recognized no constraints on the ruler nor any rights to property for his underlings. It was a pattern that would remain remarkably consistent over the coming centuries. President Putin’s relation to the present-day oligarchs is not much different from the relations between the Muscovite Grand Princes and their boyars.

The impact on Europe of the destruction of Novgorod was significant. Sources claim the Hanseatic League never really recovered from the loss of its eastern trade. English and German emissaries sent by their kings to take stock of the emerging new power in the east would depict Muscovy as a “rude and barbarous kingdom.” This also was the time when the Ukrainian nation began to emerge, with its own language and culture.

When Ivan III launched his first attack against Novgorod, the King of Poland, also Grand Prince of Lithuania, Casimir IV, was treaty bound to come to the rescue. Generations of Poles and Lithuanians would lament his failure to honor this obligation. It is tempting to speculate that if the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Novgorod had jointly stood up to Muscovy, Moscow might have remained an isolated outpost – while Novgorod and Kyiv could have emerged as successful European states.

Mongol headdress

A central feature of Muscovite mythmaking concerns the Cap of Monomakh. According to legend, this highly valuable artifact, still in the Kremlin Armory Museum, was a gift from the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus, to be presented at the coronation of Prince Vladimir II Monomakh. It was a symbolic gesture of Orthodox Christianity being passed from Byzantium to Muscovy. 

The myth is noteworthy because when Vladimir Putin celebrated his 50th birthday in 2002, he was presented with a replica of the Cap of Monomakh. What he may not know is that the cap was made not by the Byzantines but by the Mongols, and probably originated as a female headdress.

While Vladimir Putin was parading as the heir to Byzantium, with a double-headed Roman eagle in his imperial crest, he was in fact wearing a Mongol cap and would proceed to act like a Mongol ruler – bent on doing to Ukraine what his Muscovite predecessors did to Novgorod. But he failed miserably for two good reasons.

Vladmir Putin’s latter-day Muscovy will find itself increasingly exhausted by its attempt to destroy Ukraine and by its modern-day Livonian War.

One is that Russia has remained locked into its centuries-old Muscovite pattern of an economically backward warrior state, run by an autocratic ruler who allows his underlings to engage in massive corruption but awards them no property rights in their loot. The extent to which endemic corruption devastated Russia’s military capability came as a very nasty surprise.

The other is that Ukraine has emerged as a modern-day Novgorod, a trading state with an accountable democratic government and a rules-based market economy supported by a vibrant civil society. Historians will spend much time explaining how the basket case that was Ukraine in 2014 could be transformed into the success story that stood up to Russia in 2022. But no matter how, the achievement is real, and it has reordered global geopolitics.

Muscovy’s fate

The final lesson to be drawn from history is that when Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, Muscovy was so exhausted by its drawn-out campaigns to destroy Novgorod and by the Livonian War against Sweden and Poland-Lithuania that it collapsed shortly after. It would take 15 years for it to reemerge as the Russian Empire under the Romanov dynasty.

During this legendary Time of Troubles, there were numerous pretenders to the throne. Swedes seized Novgorod, and Polish forces entered the Moscow Kremlin. Estonia appealed to Sweden for protection and remained part of the Kingdom until 1721.

Vladmir Putin’s latter-day Muscovy may be looking at a similar fate. It will find itself increasingly exhausted by its attempt to destroy Ukraine and by its modern-day Livonian War.

Even if Russia manages to survive as a state, it will find that Mr. Putin’s actions have created unprecedented unity between Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. A resounding victory for Ukraine could also cause the Lukashenko regime to collapse and Belarus to return to Europe, the combined effect of which will be to push the Western borders of Muscovy back to where they were drawn at the time of Ivan the Terrible. Quite an achievement for a man who claims to have learned from history.

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Watchdog finds Department of Homeland Security falls short in addressing domestic terrorism threat

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The top watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that the DHS “could do more to address the threats of domestic terrorism.” 

The revelations, in a new 29-page report, follow an uptick in mass shootings that have been shaking the country and prompting questions about the federal law enforcement response. Last month, a state grand jury indicted the alleged Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron on charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hate in addition to 10 counts of first-degree murder.

Here the biggest takeaways from the new DHS inspector general report:

DHS has no “long-term approach” to countering domestic terrorism

The Department tasked with delivering intelligence and information about terrorist threats to the U.S. “has not established a governance body with staff dedicated to long-term oversight and coordination of its efforts to combat domestic terrorism,” according to the report.

In September 2019, DHS issued a strategic plan to tackle international and domestic terrorism, titled the Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence. But internal departmental data shows more than 70% of the “milestone actions” outlined were not completed on time.

DHS’ intelligence arm advisories “not timely enough” 

According to the DHS Inspector General, both classified and public advisories issued by the Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis “may not be timely to help them take steps to protect themselves from threats.”

During the Bush administration, DHS stood up the National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) to communicate terrorist threats to the public through bulletins and alerts. 

Although overseen by DHS’ Counterterrorism Coordinator, the National Terrorism Advisory System has had no dedicated staff in place since 2017, according to the report.

DHS’ National Terrorism Advisory System did not issue any terrorism alerts from December 2015 – February 2022

While NTAS “bulletins” are intended to communicate critical terrorism information that… [is] not necessarily indicative of a specific threat against the United States,” NTAS “alerts” are designed to warn the public of “specific, credible” threats. 

“The alert may include specific information about the nature of the threat, as well as steps that individuals and communities can take to protect themselves and help prevent, mitigate, or respond to the threat,” according to the department.

The department is responsible by law for issuing specific warnings to state and local governments and the private sector. But since December 2015, no NTAS alerts have been issued. In that same time frame, 17 bulletins included warnings about domestic terrorism, according to the report. 

Still, the Inspector General pointed out that bulletins are routinely issued when the information is no longer actionable. “The bulletin issued on January 27, 2021, warned of a heightened threat environment across the United States following the presidential inauguration,” the Inspector General wrote. “DHS issued this bulletin weeks after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.”

“Limited access” to information necessary to identify domestic terrorism threats 

According to the OIG report, “the Department has limited access to the sources of information it needs to identify domestic terrorism threats.”

Officials in DHS’ intelligence arm – known as the Office of Intelligence and Analysis – told auditors they “cannot access some types of information that is not publicly available, such as private social media groups and encrypted messaging applications.” 

This is a significant concern now, as more and more domestic extremist groups organize on encrypted or private messaging platforms. According to intelligence analysts, the department’s intelligence gathering is limited by authorities outlined in Executive Order 12333.

“Our review of nine I&A finished intelligence domestic terrorism products from July 1, 2020 through August 3, 2021, showed six of the products contained information that its partners could easily find on their own,” DHS’ Inspector General determined.

DHS Intelligence analysts lack access to FBI files that are not disseminated throughout the federal government, according to the report, while state and local entities “are not obligated to pass information onto federal authorities.” And unlike other U.S. intelligence officials, intelligence analysts at DHS do not have access to systems that grant officials the ability to browse the internet anonymously.

An “inconsistent” focus on domestic terrorism

According to the inspector general, “the Department’s priority and focus continued to be international terrorism until 2012.”

Although DHS first issued a domestic homeland security strategy in 2004, programs focused on training to counter domestic violent extremism by federal, state, and local stakeholders weren’t established until 2011. In 2016, the federal government first set up grant programs to address domestic violent extremism, with awards to state and local governments and nonprofit organizations.

The report also found that the department “has not consistently funded grants designed to help recipients combat domestic terrorism.” Guidance issued in 2018 as part of a DHS security and coordination plan only addressed domestic terrorism security for soft targets and crowded places. (That excludes hard targets such as the United States Capitol.)

Group dedicated to implementing DHS’ strategic plan to combat terrorism has no decision authority, no separate funding and no dedicated staff 

As of December 2020, U.S. law tasked a “Counter Threats Advisory Board” with coordinating efforts related to DHS’ intelligence activities, policies, and information for countering threats, including counterterrorism threats. But the board only possesses authorization for two years (beginning in December 2020) with no guarantee that future laws will sustain it. According to the Inspector General, “the same authorizing statute prohibits additional funds to carry out its mission.”

In July 2021, DHS established an “action group” led by the advisory board to implement its Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence. But according to the Inspector General, that group “has no decision authority” and must seek approval from the advisory board for actions it takes to implement the framework. Further, the group has no dedicated staff charged with carrying out the implementation. 

DHS does not compile national-level statistics on terrorism

“DHS could do more to compile, maintain, and track domestic terrorism information for future planning,” the inspector general noted.

Although DHS’ internal policy grants its Office of Intelligence and Analysis responsibility for releasing collected statistics to its partners, the agency “has not used the information to develop overall statistics on domestic terrorism that DHS and I&A partners could use to make informed decisions,” according to the inspector general. One intelligence analyst told auditors that DHS first used a “spreadsheet tracker” to brief federal, state, and local government partners on domestic terrorism incidents in March 2022.

DHS IG made six recommendations to the department

Among its recommendations, the IG proposed that the department’s counterterrorism coordinator lead a “needs assessment” to identify the staffing and budget deficits within DHS’ mission to counter domestic terrorism, including within the critically understaffed National Terrorism Advisory System.

The report also suggested that DHS’ Under Secretary of Intelligence and Analysis, should “immediately begin working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to ensure… appropriate access to FBI case information” and publish “national-level statistics” on domestic terrorism.

DHS “concurred” with all six of the inspector general’s suggestions

The Department agreed to complete the needs assessment by March 31, 2023 and said it would  discuss “appropriate access to domestic terrorism case information” with FBI and the Justice Department by the end of the year.

In the department’s response, DHS Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans Robert Silvers also committed to developing national-level statistics on domestic terrorism by June of next year.

DHS spokesperson said the department “will work to implement” the inspector general’s suggestions and added that since last year, DHS has issued bulletins and other products to provide information to Americans about the terrorist threat environment and threats, including six National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletins, which communicated information about threats and about “resources for how to stay safe during the heightened threat environment.”

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U.S. Senators in Kyiv Call on Congress to Declare Russia a “State Sponsor of Terror”

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Putin’s Operational Pause Could Be a Bad Sign for the Russian Military

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Why did Putin order an operational pause in Ukraine? On day 135 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military is conducting an operational pause in the Donbas after some recent successes.

Operational Pause and Ukrainian Counteroffensives 

On Thursday, Igor Konashenkov, the spokesperson of the Russian Defense Ministry, announced that the Russian military is pausing to rest and reorganize its combat capabilities in the Donbas.

The Russian defense official didn’t specify the duration of this operation pause. However, it should be highlighted that this operational pause concerns large-scale offensive operations and not all combat. Russian forces are still conducting limited, small-scale offensive operations in the Donbas.

Why the Operational Pause?

After capturing Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last week, the Russian military has paused its main offensive operations in order to regroup and replenish its forces. The Kremlin’s next target is the Donetsk province, which is located adjacent to the Luhansk province the Russian forces captured with Lysychansk.

In its daily estimate of the war, the British Ministry of Defense focused on the Russian operational pause and the Ukrainian counteroffensive toward Kherson.

“Russia is likely concentrating equipment on the front line in the direction of Siversk, approximately 8km west of the current Russian front line. Its forces are likely pausing to replenish before undertaking new offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Operational Pause as a Bad Sign?

However, there is also one other explanation for the Russian operational pause. The Ukrainians have been using their newly acquired (nine so far) M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to target Russian ammunition depots far behind the frontlines. As a result, the Russian military is running out of ammo to support its offensive.

“There is a realistic possibility that Russia’s immediate tactical objective will be Siversk, as its forces attempt to advance towards its most likely operational goal of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk urban area,” the British Ministry of Defense added.

At the same time that the Russian military was fighting street to street for Severodonetsk, the Ukrainian General Staff was launching a counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. Now, after weeks of slow but deliberate advance, the Ukrainian forces are reaching the outskirts of Kherson—the most important city that the Russians have managed to capture so far in the war.

“Ukrainian forces continue to make gradual advances in the south-western Kherson sector,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

Russian Casualties: Another Reason for the Operational Pause? 

The Russian military continues to suffer heavy casualties in Ukraine.

Over the last 24 hours alone, the Ukrainian General Staff is claiming to have killed or wounded up to 750 Russian troops (Ukrainians are claiming 250 killed, and usually for every killed, there is between one to two wounded). In addition, the Ukrainians are claiming to have destroyed or captured 35 tanks, 20 vehicles and fuel tanks, 14 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, 13 artillery pieces, and 2 unmanned aerial systems.

Such high numbers of casualties are unsustainable in the long run. And right now, there seems to be no end in sight to the conflict to end. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that his country wouldn’t stop fighting until every Russian soldier has been kicked out of Ukrainian soil. To achieve that, it would most likely take months of fighting. Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that the war won’t stop until he has gained what he wants (or, more accurately, what he can get away with, which right now seems to be eastern and southern Ukraine, where most of the country’s industry and mineral wealth is located).

To be sure, the Ukrainian figures could be off, and Kyiv could be very well hyping the casualties its troops are inflicting on the Russians. But thus far, the Ukrainian claims have been independently verified to a large degree, both by Western intelligence services and private open-source investigators.

Overall, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Friday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 36,900 Russian troops (and wounded approximately thrice that number), destroyed 217 fighter, attack, and transport jets, 187 attack and transport helicopters, 1,637 tanks, 828 artillery pieces, 3,811 armored personnel carriers, 247 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 15 boats and cutters, 2,685 vehicles and fuel tanks, 153 anti-aircraft batteries, 669 tactical unmanned aerial systems, 66 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles, and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems, and 155 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.

1945’s New Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

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Once a Crucial Refuge, ‘Gayborhoods’ Lose L.G.B.T.Q. Residents in Major Cities

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Many are choosing to live elsewhere in search of cheaper housing and better amenities. They are finding growing acceptance in other communities after decades of political and social changes.

Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

Adam Nagourney
Published July 3, 2022Updated July 4, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO — Cleve Jones has lived in the Castro neighborhood for nearly 50 years, almost from the day he graduated from high school in Phoenix and hitchhiked to California.

He has been a political and cultural leader in San Francisco, organizing gay men and lesbians when the AIDS epidemic devastated these streets in the early 1980s. He created the nationally recognized AIDS Memorial Quilt from a storefront on Market Street. He was a face of the anger and sorrow that swept the Castro in 1978 after the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to the Board of Supervisors.

Mr. Jones has helped define the Castro, dancing at its gay bars seven nights a week when he was younger, gathering with friends for drinks and gossip as he grew older. To this day, he is recognized when he walks down its sidewalks. “Hi Cleve — I know who you are,” said Lt. Amy Hurwitz of the San Francisco Police Department, after Mr. Jones began to introduce himself.

But in May, Mr. Jones, 67, left for a small home with a garden and apple and peach trees 75 miles away in Sonoma County after the monthly cost of his one-bedroom apartment soared from $2,400 to $5,200.

The departure of Cleve Jones, a political and cultural leader who helped define the Castro, has sent tremors through L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhoods across the country.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

His story is not just another tale of a longtime resident priced out of a gentrifying housing market. Across the country, L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhoods in big cities — New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco among them — are experiencing a confluence of social, cultural and economic factors, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, that is diluting their influence and visibility. In a few cases, some L.G.B.T.Q. leaders say, the neighborhoods’ very existence is threatened.

“I walk around the neighborhood that encouraged me for so many decades, and I see the reminders of Harvey and the Rainbow Honor Walk, celebrating famous queer and trans people,” Mr. Jones said as he led a visitor on a tour of his old neighborhood, pointing out empty storefronts and sidewalks. “I just can’t help but think that soon there will be a time when people walking up and down the street will have no clue what this is all about.”

Housing costs are a big reason for that. But there are other factors as well.

L.G.B.T.Q. couples, particularly younger ones, are starting families and considering more traditional features — public schools, parks and larger homes — in deciding where they want to live. The draw of “gayborhoods” as a refuge for past generations looking to escape discrimination and harassment is less of an imperative today, reflecting the rising acceptance of gay and lesbian people. And dating apps have, for many, replaced the gay bar as a place that leads to a relationship or a sexual encounter.

Many gay and lesbian leaders said this might well be a long-lasting realignment, an unexpected product of the success of a gay rights movement, including the Supreme Court’s recognition of same-sex marriage in 2015, that has pushed for equal rights and integration into mainstream society.

There are few places where this transformation is more on display than in the Castro, long a barometer of the evolution of gay and lesbian life in America. It is a place where same-sex couples crammed the streets, sidewalks, bars and restaurants in defiance and celebration as L.G.B.T.Q. people in other cities lived cloistered lives.

The Castro houses the old campaign headquarters of Harvey Milk, an openly gay politician who was assassinated in 1978.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

It was the stage for some of the first glimmers of the modern gay rights movement in the late 1960s; the rise to the political establishment with the election of openly gay officials like Mr. Milk; and the community’s powerful response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

“Gayborhoods are going away,” Mr. Jones said. “People need to pay attention to this. When people are dispersed, when they no longer live in geographic concentrations, when they no longer inhabit specific precincts, we lose a lot. We lose political power. We lose the ability to elect our own and defeat our enemies.”

Cynthia Laird, the news editor of The Bay Area Reporter, an L.G.B.T.Q. newspaper based in San Francisco, said she was reminded of this transformation every time she walked through the neighborhood.

“I wanted to get a picture of people walking in the rainbow crosswalk at the corner of Castro and 18th Street and there was nobody walking,” she said. “The Castro and San Francisco have changed a lot over the past 25 years. We have seen a lot of L.G.B.T.Q. people move from San Francisco to Oakland — which is where I live — and even further out in the East Bay.”

Mr. Jones’s departure has sent tremors through gay neighborhoods across the country, all the more so because it happened in the midst of annual pride celebrations marking the advances of the L.G.B.T.Q. movement since the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, in June 1969.

A visitor brought carnations to the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on June 11. The national effort began in the Castro neighborhood in the 1980s.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

“What I see in Houston is we are losing our history,” said Tammi Wallace, the president of the Greater Houston L.G.B.T. Chamber of Commerce, who lives in Montrose, the city’s gay neighborhood. “A lot of individuals and couples are saying, ‘We can move to different parts of the city and know we are going to be accepted.’”

Daniel B. Hess, a professor of urban planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the co-author of a book about the evolution of gay neighborhoods, said U.S. census data over the past three decades showed a decline in the density of same-sex couples in Chelsea and Greenwich Village in New York City, Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., West Hollywood in Los Angeles County and the Castro, which he called “America’s premier gay neighborhood.”

“Gay men are moving out of gay neighborhoods,” he said. “They are settling in other urban neighborhoods and close-in suburbs. And non-L.G.B.T.Q. people are moving in and knocking down the concentration in gay neighborhoods.”

Dr. Hess said part of this was generational. The men and women who established these neighborhoods “wanted to segregate and be surrounded by gay people,” he said. “In contrast, when you ask young people today what they want, they would prefer an inclusive coffee shop. They don’t want anyone to feel unwelcome.”

Twin Peaks Bar in the Castro. Historically, gay men and women have moved into relatively downtrodden neighborhoods, like the Castro and Montrose in Houston, fixing them up.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

Some gay leaders argued that the instinct to live in communities of like-minded people remained a powerful draw and that there would always be some version of a gayborhood, though perhaps not as concentrated and powerful.

“I say this as a gay man: It’s nice to live in a community where there are a lot of other queer people there, where I can go out and walk on the street to a gay bar,” said Scott Wiener, a California state senator who lives in the Castro. “Where I can walk two blocks to get an H.I.V. and S.T.D. test at a clinic that won’t judge me.”

“We have to be very intentional of protecting these neighborhoods — and keeping them queer,” he said. “With that said, I also believe that the Castro is very strong and has very deep L.G.B.T.Q. roots.”

These changes follow a comparable pattern in American history: Immigrants establish ethnic neighborhoods to escape discrimination and build community ties, but those enclaves lose their distinction and energy as subsequent generations move to suburbs that have become more welcoming

In this case, it is also a story of gentrification, economic cycles and social change. Gay men and women have moved into relatively downtrodden neighborhoods, like the Castro and Montrose, fixing them up. Once housing costs become too high, residents and younger generations have relocated to another downtrodden neighborhood.

Preparing to join the Capital Pride Parade in Washington. Across the country, L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhoods are struggling with a confluence of social, cultural and economic factors that threatens their very existence.Credit…Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

In New York City, that has meant a shift from Greenwich Village to Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen; in the Los Angeles area, a migration from West Hollywood to neighborhoods like Silver Lake. But the relocations this time have been more far-flung.

“I know a lot of new gay dads who are living in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill,” two neighborhoods in Brooklyn, said Corey Johnson, a former speaker of the New York City Council who is gay and lives in Greenwich Village. “They are not traditional gay neighborhoods. Schools are better. It’s more affordable. And you have more space.”

Mr. Johnson argued this had in fact resulted in an increase of openly gay and lesbian members of the City Council. But other L.G.B.T.Q. leaders said there was a real danger in this kind of diaspora.

“I think it’s important that we have spaces where we walk around, hold hands and maybe share a brief kiss and not be too worried,” said Tina Aguirre, the manager of the Castro L.G.B.T.Q. Cultural District. “We need to live in queer neighborhoods. It’s just not as pressing as it was in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Paying homage in 1996 on Castro Street, where Mr. Milk once owned a camera store.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

On a beautiful afternoon in June, gay rainbow flags were fluttering up and down Castro Street as Mr. Jones walked by reminders of an earlier era. The Castro Theater, a landmark backdrop for parades and protests over decades, is reopening after a long closure forced by Covid-19. Men, mostly, were drinking in bars, and some of the sex shops were open. At one point, a completely naked man walked nonchalantly past on the sidewalk.

“I guess he’s trying to keep the neighborhood gay, too,” Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Jones paused by the storefront where Mr. Milk had a camera shop. In 1979, Mr. Jones lived two houses away and watched from his apartment when the police moved in on protesters on Castro Street following the lenient verdicts handed down to Dan White, a former supervisor, for the assassinations of Mr. Milk and George Moscone, the San Francisco mayor. “The night of the White Night riots, when the police counterattacked, we were out on the fire escape up there just watching the chaos,” Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Milk, evicted from his Castro Street storefront, had later moved his camera shop over Market Street. That was the space Mr. Jones used for the AIDS quilt project. It is today a restaurant.

Mr. Jones is not happy about leaving this corner of San Francisco, but said he had little choice. He had lived in his Castro apartment for 11 years before his landlord asserted that he forfeited his rent control protections by living in Sonoma County, effectively forcing him out by more than doubling his rent. He said he liked having the getaway of his home in Guerneville, but had considered himself a city person from the day he arrived here as a teenager from Phoenix.

“Everything good in my life has come out of this neighborhood,” he said.

Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times
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Opinion | In Russia, Gay People Are Routinely Targeted. That’s Why This Ukrainian Soldier Is Fighting.

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In Russia, Gay People Are Routinely Targeted. That’s Why This Ukrainian Soldier Is Fighting.

When Putin invaded, Oleksandr Zhuhan chose to defend a country that hasn’t always defended him.

Thursday, July 7th, 2022

lulu garcia-navarro

From The earliest days of the war in Ukraine, we’ve seen the images of everyday Ukrainians signing up to defend their country against the Russian invasion leaving behind the lives they’d been living just days before. Wars can be uniting in that way with citizens coming together against a shared enemy, putting their differences aside. Oleksandr Zhuhan, Sashko for short, was one of those who joined Ukraine’s volunteer forces. He’s gay, and for him, Putin’s Russia held particular terror. Gay people are routinely targeted their, arrested without cause, even tortured. And among the reasons Putin gave for invading Ukraine, he said the country had embraced values, quote, “contrary to human nature.”

But Sashko had also experienced homophobia within Ukraine in the years leading up to the war. So when he started talking to my colleague, Courtney Stein in the early days of the fighting, he was facing dual fears a future under Russia, but also how he might be treated by the soldiers he was serving alongside. From “New York Times Opinion,” this is “First Person.” I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Today, Sashko and the fight for his future in Ukraine.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. Today is calmer than it was yesterday, but still it’s not safe here. Anyway —

courtney stein

When we first started talking, Sashko was too busy to get on the phone.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We hear bumping sounds like every 15 minutes or every half an hour.

He was just a couple of days into his enlistment, and these were the early days of the war when Russia was shelling Kyiv. His unit was stationed in what had been a mall there.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And we are sleeping now next to the window shop. It looks somehow surrealistic because we see that beautiful clothes and we are wearing the same clothes that we came here in.

So I asked him to send me voice memos whenever he had a free minute. And what most came through was just how disorienting this all was for him.

oleksandr zhuhan

I haven’t — I hadn’t held a gun in my life until the 24th of February. I skipped all the lessons of —

courtney stein

In Ukraine, boys learn how to shoot guns in school. But Sashko never wanted any part of that sort of thing. He’d never imagined fighting in a war, even up to the moment he enlisted alongside the partner he calls his husband, though they can’t be legally married.

oleksandr zhuhan

We didn’t think that we would be given guns. We thought that we would do something like, I don’t know, cooking or cleaning or carrying heavy things, something like that. My husband is a director, and I am an actor and a director and a playwright. We are very stereotypically gay, if I can put it this way, like we are a gay couple who are vegans and we are very anti, I don’t know, war.

courtney stein

Or at least they had been, then Russia invaded. Sashko and Antonina spent the night of the invasion hiding in their bathroom, weighing whether to enlist.

oleksandr zhuhan

For both of us, it was a very difficult decision because we used to avoid places where there are lots of manly men, like stereotypically heterosexual men who want to fight. And we have met violence against gay people before and it was difficult.

courtney stein

But the day after Russia invaded when it became clear just how serious the situation was, both Sashko and Antonina signed up. They weren’t telling anyone they were together though.

oleksandr zhuhan

There was a situation when a man from our unit came up to us and asked, so are you brothers or friends? And since he only gave us like two options, I said friends very quickly. But then I was sorry and I kept thinking to myself, what would have happened if I had said we are husband and husband? What would have changed? I’m not sure.

courtney stein

In Ukraine, boys learned how to shoot guns in school. But Sashko never wanted any part of that sort of thing he’d never imagined fighting in a war, even up to the moment he enlisted alongside the partner he calls his husband, though they can’t be legally married.

oleksandr zhuhan

So I grew up in a small town in the Central Ukraine. When I was born, it was still the Soviet Union.

courtney stein

As a kid, Sashko spoke Russian in school. Then in 1991 when he was seven, Ukraine declared its independence. But it wasn’t a big patriotic moment in Sashko’s memory. What he remembers is the economic collapse that followed.

oleksandr zhuhan

People had to survive and they did different things, like some people stole, some people — I don’t the word for that. They did very bad things to survive and to get some food for their children.

courtney stein

Sashko and his parents lived in an apartment block with a shared courtyard.

oleksandr zhuhan

All the kids knew one another from the moment they were born. And I knew that there were some boys that my mom said, you mustn’t be friends with those boys because they smoke and their parents are not a very good family. Some of them smoked cigarettes beginning at the age of five I suppose.

courtney stein

What?

oleksandr zhuhan

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.

courtney stein

Sashko wasn’t that kind of kid though. He was a rule follower.

oleksandr zhuhan

I was really very out of touch with the reality I think. I mean, I didn’t know much about sexuality, about homosexuality, or anything like this. I really like to draw, and I drew things like every day. I had albums. Do you do you say album or notebooks?

courtney stein

Notebooks.

oleksandr zhuhan

Filled with sketches. Yeah. And I had a secret notebook where I drew all like naked, people naked men. And I was about, I don’t know, 10 or 11 years old. And my mom found it and she said, oh my god, what was that? I was so ashamed. And she said that it was really a bad thing.

courtney stein

That was the message Sashko got from basically everyone growing up.

oleksandr zhuhan

Homosexuality was something that you should be ashamed of. And it was something that people in prison, you know, prisoners used to punish other prisoners. Does it make sense what I’m saying?

courtney stein

So it wasn’t like that people were actually gay. It was just a punishment.

oleksandr zhuhan

Yeah. Yeah. Or whenever you heard the word homosexuality, it was considered some of the world’s biggest threats, you know, like homosexuality atomic war.

courtney stein

And given that, when he left his hometown and went to Kyiv for college, he stayed in the closet. But in his second year, he fell in love with his roommate who was straight.

oleksandr zhuhan

One day I just decided that, oh my god, if he doesn’t love me then I have no more reason to live. I know now that it was very stupid, but I was 16. So I got all the drugs that I had, I mix them with alcohol and I drank them all. And at first, I fainted, but then my friends found me and they called the ambulance.

courtney stein

He ended up in the hospital. They called his mom to take him home.

oleksandr zhuhan

And of course, she started asking questions, and I had to tell her.

courtney stein

How did she respond?

oleksandr zhuhan

She said, it’s OK, I love you. Maybe one day you’ll meet a woman and you’ll have children and I’ll pray for you. Let’s pray together. And I said, oh my god, mom, don’t. Please, I — and that was like second coming out. I said, I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist. Yeah. And then some years later, I’m a vegan. And you know, like it was a bingo, gay vegan atheist. No more hope for mom.

courtney stein

Which one was hardest for her, the atheist, the veganism, or the being gay?

oleksandr zhuhan

I don’t think that she accepted anything, any of these.

courtney stein

When he finished college, Sashko stayed in Kyiv. He met some other gay people, but he said it was still too early to call it a community. He started dating, but it didn’t always go well.

oleksandr zhuhan

One of them was a criminal, so that was that bad. Yeah. And so I embraced that some people find their partners in life and some people don’t. Some people die lonely. And it stopped scaring me because before that, I thought that it was one of my biggest priorities, you know, to find a partner, to make family, and so on.

courtney stein

Then in 2014, Sashko got a message on a dating site.

oleksandr zhuhan

And at that stage, I met Antonina. I looked through his profile and I found out that he was into theater and that he was a refugee from Crimea. And that looked interesting.

courtney stein

Antonina recently began identifying as non-binary and using she and her pronouns. But Sashko still goes back and forth.

oleksandr zhuhan

He or she, yeah, I’m still confusing these things. We arranged a meeting. It wasn’t a date. It was a meeting.

courtney stein

They connected at a big moment in Ukraine, the moment a lot of Ukrainians say was the actual beginning of this war. The Ukrainian president at the time, who Putin supported, had just fled to Russia after months of protests forced him from office. Within days, Russian troops moved in to occupy Crimea. And like a lot of L.G.B.T.Q. people there, Antonina fled and ended up in Kyiv.

oleksandr zhuhan

We met on the bridge which is non-existent now. And we spend the night like talking and drinking coffee, talking about children, about theater and all kinds of things. And it was like, I don’t know how many hours. And that’s how we met. I think that talking to him and spending evenings and nights talking about what’s right and what’s wrong made me the person I am today.

courtney stein

Not long after they met, Sashko says he and Antonina decided to stop speaking Russian. And they helped create a theater group that performed pieces calling out Russian aggression in Crimea and homophobia within Russian culture. Outside the theater, they were also calling on Ukraine to recognize L.G.B.T.Q. rights and taking part in some of the earliest Pride celebrations.

oleksandr zhuhan

I think it was 2015, the biggest slogan of this Pride was that we exist. And there were like less than 50 people and lots and lots and lots of the police.

courtney stein

Since then, Pride in Kyiv has grown. In recent years, the parade has attracted thousands of people, part of a broader liberalization, especially among young people in the cities. But with that liberalization, there’s also been a backlash. Sashko told me about a night last November when he and Antonina were approached by two men in the street.

oleksandr zhuhan

First they came up to us, and Antonina was wearing a tiny —

what’s this thing called that’s not a stripe but ribbon? Oh, I forgot the word.

courtney stein

Rainbow?

oleksandr zhuhan

Rainbow. Yes, rainbow ribbon. Thanks. And I felt this danger right away the way they looked at us. And they were like about 50 meters away, and the street was empty. And one of them started following us. And they started talking to us in a very rude manner like, hey, are you fags? What are you wearing? Do you believe in God? Are you patriots? And they started pushing us and so on. And that was the first time when all I am like anti-violent person. If there is a chance for the words to work it out, I usually use the words.

courtney stein

But then, one of the guys pushed Antonina to the ground.

oleksandr zhuhan

And I was like off. I went bananas. And I was so mad that I felt I could tear those men with my bare hands because I was like, I don’t know where I got the strength. But it was like the first, maybe the second time in my life when I got to hit a person right in the face. And I felt so, I don’t know, empowered. That was the word. Like I hit back, and they didn’t expect it. Like, they thought that they were like no attacking to fags who couldn’t hit back.

courtney stein

The attack was still fresh in Sashko’s mind when Russian forces invaded Ukraine just a few months later. It was all part of what was weighing on him and Antonina that night they spent huddled in their bathroom considering their options.

oleksandr zhuhan

I definitely had doubts like, I was not afraid to go and fight, but I was really — I felt a great anxiety if I would fit in. And being gay was part of things that gave me that anxiety. But on the second day when Russia went full scale and when we understood that it was not a joke, it’s going to be for a long time, we couldn’t make any other choice really. What mattered was to protect our country.

courtney stein

So that’s how Sashko and Antonina came to enlist in this war, fighting to protect a country that hadn’t always protected them alongside soldiers who in peacetime might have been their enemies.

oleksandr zhuhan

I’m not considering the option of losing my freedom, because for an L.G.B.T.Q. person to lose freedom, to get captured by the Russians is worse than death, so I’ll be fighting until I win or I die.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. It’s the eighth of March, Tuesday. So I’m going to go on describing what life has become for me since the war started.

courtney stein

Not long after he enlisted, Sashko sent me this voice memo.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN It’s been 13 days since Russia attacked Ukraine for no reason. I’m sick now, and almost everyone in our unit is either sick or getting better.

And it’s because it’s always cold in here. We’re sleeping on the floor now in sleeping bags. But I’m not complaining, it’s just that you ask me to describe what it is like here. I go patrolling three times a day.

On these patrols, Sashko and Antonina were often together but still keeping their relationship a secret.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN The commander is very loyal. Well, he doesn’t know or he doesn’t want to know that we are a gay couple. We don’t touch or we don’t hold hands, we don’t hug each other. And the riskiest thing that my husband has done since the first day he kissed me on the forehead when I said that I probably had temperature. And he pressed his lips against my forehead like just to check if I had temperature. But it was a kiss, I knew it.

He’s the one person who can —

I don’t know, who can calm me down and ask if I’m OK.

Hello, Sashko? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Courtney, can you hear me now?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah.

As winter turned into spring, Russia continued to focus a lot of its air power on Kyiv. At this point, the volunteer forces were largely playing a support role away from the fighting. So Sashko and Antonina weren’t seeing active combat, but the war was all around them.

How are you?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Well, it’s been tough time. Tonight, there were like three regions where the bombs fell, and one of them was right next to us, next to our base. But it’s OK. We’re alive and more or less healthy. In 15 minutes, I’ll have to go to unpack the big cars with provisions and ammunition. So that’s our job. That’s the riskiest thing I’ve done so far. We’re just defending the base. And how are you feeling about that being your role right now?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN I’m OK. Well, on the first day when we came here, lots of guys, they were like, wow, I want to go and fight and so on. And I was like, I’m pretty much OK with the things as they are now. And the terrible thing is that we are getting used to this state of things. And I don’t want this to be my usual state.

The day before yesterday, we went to the place where we learn to shoot guns. We have Kalashnikovs, and I was thinking about my old sewing machine because I work in the theater so I can saw costumes for a theater place. And I was thinking about, well, I used to hate to oil my sewing machine, but I would love to do it now instead of oiling my gun. So it was like, you know, those flashbacks about what life used to be.

Hi, Courtney. It’s been a month and two days since the beginning of the war, and I have been thinking a lot about it one hell of a time, which happened not so often because we are either too busy or too exhausted to think.

There are things that depress me, but there are good things though.

For example, some people from our unit, they added us as friends on Facebook. And one of them came up to me the other day and he said, I read your post on Facebook. And he said, I didn’t put a like below this post, but I really want to say that I think it’s a great post and I liked it.

In the post, Sashko talked about the similarities between the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and Ukrainian independence. He said that where Russia was driven by fear and hate, he hoped Ukraine would follow a different path after the war, a path of tolerance and acceptance.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN So it was a good thing, and that really made my day.

For the next few weeks, Sashko’s unit stayed in the same warehouse in Kyiv, protecting ammunition and resupplies for the regular army troops that were pushing the Russians back in other parts of the city. Then in April, Ukrainian forces retook the suburbs, places like Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were tortured and killed. Sashko messaged that he and Antonina had been moved and were now doing a different job but still mainly on guard duty. A few days later, we got on the phone.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney.

antonina ramanova

Hello, Courtney.

courtney stein

And I got to hear Antonina for the first time.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, Courtney, the thing is, Antonina speaks very little English.

antonina ramanova

My English is not very good.

courtney stein

So Antonina just listened while Sashko and I talked. Sashko said that now he assumed people in their unit understood that he and Antonina were a couple, but they still weren’t publicly acknowledging their relationship.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN But sometimes we like, I don’t know, touch fingers or — well, that’s mostly it. We touch fingers. That’s it.

I saw on your Facebook pages that you have decorated your guns with stickers. OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah.

It feels like a small act of resistance.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah. And our guns really stand out from the other guns.

Can you describe them? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yes. So like there’s a rainbow and a unicorn and a pineapple.

Do other people decorate their guns or is it just you guys?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN No, not really. We are the only ones with the stickers. Now, I saw one more person with a sticker, but it was like a sticker of a skull. And we have those optimistic, cute stickers.

And has your commander, anyone ever mentioned it like as a security concern or question you about it? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, yeah, yeah. One person came up to me like two days ago and said, that sticker has lots of white and it’s going to be a problem if we fight in the darkness like it could be seen from afar. And I said, OK, so when we fight in the darkness, I’ll take it off.

At the end of April, Putin declared victory in Mariupol, and Russian troops continued to push into Eastern and Southern Ukraine where hundreds of Ukrainian troops were dying every day. Sashko sent me a text message. Their unit had been given a choice, they could pack up and go volunteer in Kyiv as civilians or they could help bolster the military’s ranks and join another battalion and be sent to the front lines in the south.

This time, the decision wasn’t so clear. Sashko thought that he could be more useful as a volunteer. But for Antonina, returning to Kyiv was out of the question. Sashko wrote me that Antonina was intent on going with or without him. So he decided he was going too. But they weren’t sent right away.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We’re waiting here for the transfer.

Weeks passed. Then at the end of May, Sashko got back in touch.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. Sorry for not responding to you right away.

Things had been busy, he said.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And on Wednesday, that’s tomorrow, we are going to Mykolaiv. Mykolaiv is a city in the south of Ukraine. It’s close to Odessa.

Mykolaiv, Sashko explained, was part of the New frontline in the war. Like in Mariupol to the east, the Russians had managed to cut off water to Mykolaiv, forcing many of the city’s half a million residents to flee.

Before leaving for the south, Sashko and Antonina were sent home to Kyiv for a few days. Their apartment hadn’t been damaged in the shelling. And for the first time in the three months since they signed up for the territorial defense, they were able to sleep in their own bed. And with the Russians no longer anywhere near the city, cafes and shops were open again.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We were walking around the city, and I felt like I was walking next to a fish tank looking at people who are having their lattes. And the war seemed very real, but this life in Kyiv, the peaceful life seemed like something impossible. And I could physically feel it. I felt weak at my knees, and I had a strange feeling in my stomach and everything seemed so unstable.

And I just can’t pull myself together. Everything feels like a very bad, meaningless movie without the end. And the worst thing, the thing that I’m afraid most is that the war is going to be for like two, three, five, eight years more.

Sashko and Antonina met up with a friend from the theater world while in Kyiv. But Sashko could only think about war. He no longer related to his past life, and he was distracted by his upcoming deployment.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And the thing that I’m worried about is that in the new battalion, maybe there will be like real army people with strong hierarchy. I have an idea that in Mykolaiv in that new battalion, I’m going to be more open about my sexuality. Like I’m not going to wait if anyone asks or I’m not going to let them be guessing.

A few days later, I heard from Sashko again. They had made it to Mykolaiv.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hey there, Courtney. Hope you’re hearing me OK.

They’d begun digging trenches in anticipation of a new Russian offensive.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And today when we met our commander, and he was like getting acquainted, speaking to us, giving his speech, he said, I’ve had gay guys in my unit before and it was no problem with them. So if I see or hear any cases of homophobia, this unit is not a place for homophobia. Is that clear? And we are not going to talk about that again.

He said, I don’t care who you are or what you do until you break the rules. So if you’re a good fighter, then I’m OK with you.

Russian troops were sending a near-constant stream of bombs and missiles toward Mykolaiv. Huge swathes of the city had been burned to the ground or completely destroyed. But on one quiet evening, I was able to talk to Sashko by phone. And I asked him to tell me more about what happened with his commander.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN He said, I know that there are guys in our unit who are gay. Like, he just looked at me and I raised my hand like, here I am, hello.

He made the things clear, you see.

And how did the other people in the unit respond?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN They were like, OK. Yeah. They didn’t say much. I mean, the way they talk, they are not like some narrow-minded, homophobic savages. What I expected because I expected the worst. Army is still a world of manly men, but we are not — I mean, I don’t feel threatened physically and I feel much more confident now. I really feel like here I just have to be like a good soldier. And that’s like some guarantee that at least the commanders will protect me if anything happens. But I’m sure that nothing bad will happen.

A few weeks later, I got this message from Sashko. OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hey, Courtney. Sorry for taking so long to respond to your message. Here’s just another piece of information, which I think is important to see a bigger picture of what’s happening here in Ukraine. So yesterday I think, that was yesterday, L.G.B.T.Q. person was beaten.

And that happened when the guy was going to give an interview about his boyfriend who had died in this Russian-Ukrainian war. And at that time, a group of young men came up to him and they attacked him. And they started shouting homophobic things and they beat him.

I don’t know what to add.

Over many months of conversation, Sashko and I had talked a lot about his hopes for the future and for the future of Ukraine. So many of them revolved around his uncertainty of what version of the country would greet him and Antonina if and when the war finally ended. But one time, I’d gotten a different answer.

Do you think about the future?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, I sometimes stop and think about the future. And I’m trying not to make some great plans like, oh, I’m going to write a play about this war or I’m going to, I don’t know, to write a song. Just very, very small things, down to earth things. Like my mom, she lives in the Central Ukraine.

And they bought a house in the village. And they went there yesterday for the first time. And she sent me a video and she said, we’re waiting for you and Antonina to come and live there and repair it because the house is very old. And there’s a garden with fruit trees. And I was, oh my God, yeah. I’d really love to do that, mom.

lulu garcia-navarro

“First Person” is a production of New York Times Opinion. We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode. Today’s episode was produced by Courtney Stein. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Lisa Tobin with help from Kaari Pitkin. Engineering by Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud.

Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. The rest of the first person team includes Cristal Duhaime, Christina Djossa, Olivia Natt, Derek Arthur and Jason Pagano. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Kate Sinclair, Jeffrey Miranda, Paula Szuchman, Irene Noguchi, Patrick Healy and Katie Kingsbury.

transcript

In Russia, Gay People Are Routinely Targeted. That’s Why This Ukrainian Soldier Is Fighting.

When Putin invaded, Oleksandr Zhuhan chose to defend a country that hasn’t always defended him.

Thursday, July 7th, 2022

lulu garcia-navarro

From The earliest days of the war in Ukraine, we’ve seen the images of everyday Ukrainians signing up to defend their country against the Russian invasion leaving behind the lives they’d been living just days before. Wars can be uniting in that way with citizens coming together against a shared enemy, putting their differences aside. Oleksandr Zhuhan, Sashko for short, was one of those who joined Ukraine’s volunteer forces. He’s gay, and for him, Putin’s Russia held particular terror. Gay people are routinely targeted their, arrested without cause, even tortured. And among the reasons Putin gave for invading Ukraine, he said the country had embraced values, quote, “contrary to human nature.”

But Sashko had also experienced homophobia within Ukraine in the years leading up to the war. So when he started talking to my colleague, Courtney Stein in the early days of the fighting, he was facing dual fears a future under Russia, but also how he might be treated by the soldiers he was serving alongside. From “New York Times Opinion,” this is “First Person.” I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Today, Sashko and the fight for his future in Ukraine.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. Today is calmer than it was yesterday, but still it’s not safe here. Anyway —

courtney stein

When we first started talking, Sashko was too busy to get on the phone.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We hear bumping sounds like every 15 minutes or every half an hour.

He was just a couple of days into his enlistment, and these were the early days of the war when Russia was shelling Kyiv. His unit was stationed in what had been a mall there.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And we are sleeping now next to the window shop. It looks somehow surrealistic because we see that beautiful clothes and we are wearing the same clothes that we came here in.

So I asked him to send me voice memos whenever he had a free minute. And what most came through was just how disorienting this all was for him.

oleksandr zhuhan

I haven’t — I hadn’t held a gun in my life until the 24th of February. I skipped all the lessons of —

courtney stein

In Ukraine, boys learn how to shoot guns in school. But Sashko never wanted any part of that sort of thing. He’d never imagined fighting in a war, even up to the moment he enlisted alongside the partner he calls his husband, though they can’t be legally married.

oleksandr zhuhan

We didn’t think that we would be given guns. We thought that we would do something like, I don’t know, cooking or cleaning or carrying heavy things, something like that. My husband is a director, and I am an actor and a director and a playwright. We are very stereotypically gay, if I can put it this way, like we are a gay couple who are vegans and we are very anti, I don’t know, war.

courtney stein

Or at least they had been, then Russia invaded. Sashko and Antonina spent the night of the invasion hiding in their bathroom, weighing whether to enlist.

oleksandr zhuhan

For both of us, it was a very difficult decision because we used to avoid places where there are lots of manly men, like stereotypically heterosexual men who want to fight. And we have met violence against gay people before and it was difficult.

courtney stein

But the day after Russia invaded when it became clear just how serious the situation was, both Sashko and Antonina signed up. They weren’t telling anyone they were together though.

oleksandr zhuhan

There was a situation when a man from our unit came up to us and asked, so are you brothers or friends? And since he only gave us like two options, I said friends very quickly. But then I was sorry and I kept thinking to myself, what would have happened if I had said we are husband and husband? What would have changed? I’m not sure.

courtney stein

In Ukraine, boys learned how to shoot guns in school. But Sashko never wanted any part of that sort of thing he’d never imagined fighting in a war, even up to the moment he enlisted alongside the partner he calls his husband, though they can’t be legally married.

oleksandr zhuhan

So I grew up in a small town in the Central Ukraine. When I was born, it was still the Soviet Union.

courtney stein

As a kid, Sashko spoke Russian in school. Then in 1991 when he was seven, Ukraine declared its independence. But it wasn’t a big patriotic moment in Sashko’s memory. What he remembers is the economic collapse that followed.

oleksandr zhuhan

People had to survive and they did different things, like some people stole, some people — I don’t the word for that. They did very bad things to survive and to get some food for their children.

courtney stein

Sashko and his parents lived in an apartment block with a shared courtyard.

oleksandr zhuhan

All the kids knew one another from the moment they were born. And I knew that there were some boys that my mom said, you mustn’t be friends with those boys because they smoke and their parents are not a very good family. Some of them smoked cigarettes beginning at the age of five I suppose.

courtney stein

What?

oleksandr zhuhan

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.

courtney stein

Sashko wasn’t that kind of kid though. He was a rule follower.

oleksandr zhuhan

I was really very out of touch with the reality I think. I mean, I didn’t know much about sexuality, about homosexuality, or anything like this. I really like to draw, and I drew things like every day. I had albums. Do you do you say album or notebooks?

courtney stein

Notebooks.

oleksandr zhuhan

Filled with sketches. Yeah. And I had a secret notebook where I drew all like naked, people naked men. And I was about, I don’t know, 10 or 11 years old. And my mom found it and she said, oh my god, what was that? I was so ashamed. And she said that it was really a bad thing.

courtney stein

That was the message Sashko got from basically everyone growing up.

oleksandr zhuhan

Homosexuality was something that you should be ashamed of. And it was something that people in prison, you know, prisoners used to punish other prisoners. Does it make sense what I’m saying?

courtney stein

So it wasn’t like that people were actually gay. It was just a punishment.

oleksandr zhuhan

Yeah. Yeah. Or whenever you heard the word homosexuality, it was considered some of the world’s biggest threats, you know, like homosexuality atomic war.

courtney stein

And given that, when he left his hometown and went to Kyiv for college, he stayed in the closet. But in his second year, he fell in love with his roommate who was straight.

oleksandr zhuhan

One day I just decided that, oh my god, if he doesn’t love me then I have no more reason to live. I know now that it was very stupid, but I was 16. So I got all the drugs that I had, I mix them with alcohol and I drank them all. And at first, I fainted, but then my friends found me and they called the ambulance.

courtney stein

He ended up in the hospital. They called his mom to take him home.

oleksandr zhuhan

And of course, she started asking questions, and I had to tell her.

courtney stein

How did she respond?

oleksandr zhuhan

She said, it’s OK, I love you. Maybe one day you’ll meet a woman and you’ll have children and I’ll pray for you. Let’s pray together. And I said, oh my god, mom, don’t. Please, I — and that was like second coming out. I said, I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist. Yeah. And then some years later, I’m a vegan. And you know, like it was a bingo, gay vegan atheist. No more hope for mom.

courtney stein

Which one was hardest for her, the atheist, the veganism, or the being gay?

oleksandr zhuhan

I don’t think that she accepted anything, any of these.

courtney stein

When he finished college, Sashko stayed in Kyiv. He met some other gay people, but he said it was still too early to call it a community. He started dating, but it didn’t always go well.

oleksandr zhuhan

One of them was a criminal, so that was that bad. Yeah. And so I embraced that some people find their partners in life and some people don’t. Some people die lonely. And it stopped scaring me because before that, I thought that it was one of my biggest priorities, you know, to find a partner, to make family, and so on.

courtney stein

Then in 2014, Sashko got a message on a dating site.

oleksandr zhuhan

And at that stage, I met Antonina. I looked through his profile and I found out that he was into theater and that he was a refugee from Crimea. And that looked interesting.

courtney stein

Antonina recently began identifying as non-binary and using she and her pronouns. But Sashko still goes back and forth.

oleksandr zhuhan

He or she, yeah, I’m still confusing these things. We arranged a meeting. It wasn’t a date. It was a meeting.

courtney stein

They connected at a big moment in Ukraine, the moment a lot of Ukrainians say was the actual beginning of this war. The Ukrainian president at the time, who Putin supported, had just fled to Russia after months of protests forced him from office. Within days, Russian troops moved in to occupy Crimea. And like a lot of L.G.B.T.Q. people there, Antonina fled and ended up in Kyiv.

oleksandr zhuhan

We met on the bridge which is non-existent now. And we spend the night like talking and drinking coffee, talking about children, about theater and all kinds of things. And it was like, I don’t know how many hours. And that’s how we met. I think that talking to him and spending evenings and nights talking about what’s right and what’s wrong made me the person I am today.

courtney stein

Not long after they met, Sashko says he and Antonina decided to stop speaking Russian. And they helped create a theater group that performed pieces calling out Russian aggression in Crimea and homophobia within Russian culture. Outside the theater, they were also calling on Ukraine to recognize L.G.B.T.Q. rights and taking part in some of the earliest Pride celebrations.

oleksandr zhuhan

I think it was 2015, the biggest slogan of this Pride was that we exist. And there were like less than 50 people and lots and lots and lots of the police.

courtney stein

Since then, Pride in Kyiv has grown. In recent years, the parade has attracted thousands of people, part of a broader liberalization, especially among young people in the cities. But with that liberalization, there’s also been a backlash. Sashko told me about a night last November when he and Antonina were approached by two men in the street.

oleksandr zhuhan

First they came up to us, and Antonina was wearing a tiny —

what’s this thing called that’s not a stripe but ribbon? Oh, I forgot the word.

courtney stein

Rainbow?

oleksandr zhuhan

Rainbow. Yes, rainbow ribbon. Thanks. And I felt this danger right away the way they looked at us. And they were like about 50 meters away, and the street was empty. And one of them started following us. And they started talking to us in a very rude manner like, hey, are you fags? What are you wearing? Do you believe in God? Are you patriots? And they started pushing us and so on. And that was the first time when all I am like anti-violent person. If there is a chance for the words to work it out, I usually use the words.

courtney stein

But then, one of the guys pushed Antonina to the ground.

oleksandr zhuhan

And I was like off. I went bananas. And I was so mad that I felt I could tear those men with my bare hands because I was like, I don’t know where I got the strength. But it was like the first, maybe the second time in my life when I got to hit a person right in the face. And I felt so, I don’t know, empowered. That was the word. Like I hit back, and they didn’t expect it. Like, they thought that they were like no attacking to fags who couldn’t hit back.

courtney stein

The attack was still fresh in Sashko’s mind when Russian forces invaded Ukraine just a few months later. It was all part of what was weighing on him and Antonina that night they spent huddled in their bathroom considering their options.

oleksandr zhuhan

I definitely had doubts like, I was not afraid to go and fight, but I was really — I felt a great anxiety if I would fit in. And being gay was part of things that gave me that anxiety. But on the second day when Russia went full scale and when we understood that it was not a joke, it’s going to be for a long time, we couldn’t make any other choice really. What mattered was to protect our country.

courtney stein

So that’s how Sashko and Antonina came to enlist in this war, fighting to protect a country that hadn’t always protected them alongside soldiers who in peacetime might have been their enemies.

oleksandr zhuhan

I’m not considering the option of losing my freedom, because for an L.G.B.T.Q. person to lose freedom, to get captured by the Russians is worse than death, so I’ll be fighting until I win or I die.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. It’s the eighth of March, Tuesday. So I’m going to go on describing what life has become for me since the war started.

courtney stein

Not long after he enlisted, Sashko sent me this voice memo.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN It’s been 13 days since Russia attacked Ukraine for no reason. I’m sick now, and almost everyone in our unit is either sick or getting better.

And it’s because it’s always cold in here. We’re sleeping on the floor now in sleeping bags. But I’m not complaining, it’s just that you ask me to describe what it is like here. I go patrolling three times a day.

On these patrols, Sashko and Antonina were often together but still keeping their relationship a secret.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN The commander is very loyal. Well, he doesn’t know or he doesn’t want to know that we are a gay couple. We don’t touch or we don’t hold hands, we don’t hug each other. And the riskiest thing that my husband has done since the first day he kissed me on the forehead when I said that I probably had temperature. And he pressed his lips against my forehead like just to check if I had temperature. But it was a kiss, I knew it.

He’s the one person who can —

I don’t know, who can calm me down and ask if I’m OK.

Hello, Sashko? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Courtney, can you hear me now?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah.

As winter turned into spring, Russia continued to focus a lot of its air power on Kyiv. At this point, the volunteer forces were largely playing a support role away from the fighting. So Sashko and Antonina weren’t seeing active combat, but the war was all around them.

How are you?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Well, it’s been tough time. Tonight, there were like three regions where the bombs fell, and one of them was right next to us, next to our base. But it’s OK. We’re alive and more or less healthy. In 15 minutes, I’ll have to go to unpack the big cars with provisions and ammunition. So that’s our job. That’s the riskiest thing I’ve done so far. We’re just defending the base. And how are you feeling about that being your role right now?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN I’m OK. Well, on the first day when we came here, lots of guys, they were like, wow, I want to go and fight and so on. And I was like, I’m pretty much OK with the things as they are now. And the terrible thing is that we are getting used to this state of things. And I don’t want this to be my usual state.

The day before yesterday, we went to the place where we learn to shoot guns. We have Kalashnikovs, and I was thinking about my old sewing machine because I work in the theater so I can saw costumes for a theater place. And I was thinking about, well, I used to hate to oil my sewing machine, but I would love to do it now instead of oiling my gun. So it was like, you know, those flashbacks about what life used to be.

Hi, Courtney. It’s been a month and two days since the beginning of the war, and I have been thinking a lot about it one hell of a time, which happened not so often because we are either too busy or too exhausted to think.

There are things that depress me, but there are good things though.

For example, some people from our unit, they added us as friends on Facebook. And one of them came up to me the other day and he said, I read your post on Facebook. And he said, I didn’t put a like below this post, but I really want to say that I think it’s a great post and I liked it.

In the post, Sashko talked about the similarities between the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and Ukrainian independence. He said that where Russia was driven by fear and hate, he hoped Ukraine would follow a different path after the war, a path of tolerance and acceptance.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN So it was a good thing, and that really made my day.

For the next few weeks, Sashko’s unit stayed in the same warehouse in Kyiv, protecting ammunition and resupplies for the regular army troops that were pushing the Russians back in other parts of the city. Then in April, Ukrainian forces retook the suburbs, places like Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were tortured and killed. Sashko messaged that he and Antonina had been moved and were now doing a different job but still mainly on guard duty. A few days later, we got on the phone.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney.

antonina ramanova

Hello, Courtney.

courtney stein

And I got to hear Antonina for the first time.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, Courtney, the thing is, Antonina speaks very little English.

antonina ramanova

My English is not very good.

courtney stein

So Antonina just listened while Sashko and I talked. Sashko said that now he assumed people in their unit understood that he and Antonina were a couple, but they still weren’t publicly acknowledging their relationship.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN But sometimes we like, I don’t know, touch fingers or — well, that’s mostly it. We touch fingers. That’s it.

I saw on your Facebook pages that you have decorated your guns with stickers. OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah.

It feels like a small act of resistance.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah. And our guns really stand out from the other guns.

Can you describe them? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yes. So like there’s a rainbow and a unicorn and a pineapple.

Do other people decorate their guns or is it just you guys?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN No, not really. We are the only ones with the stickers. Now, I saw one more person with a sticker, but it was like a sticker of a skull. And we have those optimistic, cute stickers.

And has your commander, anyone ever mentioned it like as a security concern or question you about it? OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, yeah, yeah. One person came up to me like two days ago and said, that sticker has lots of white and it’s going to be a problem if we fight in the darkness like it could be seen from afar. And I said, OK, so when we fight in the darkness, I’ll take it off.

At the end of April, Putin declared victory in Mariupol, and Russian troops continued to push into Eastern and Southern Ukraine where hundreds of Ukrainian troops were dying every day. Sashko sent me a text message. Their unit had been given a choice, they could pack up and go volunteer in Kyiv as civilians or they could help bolster the military’s ranks and join another battalion and be sent to the front lines in the south.

This time, the decision wasn’t so clear. Sashko thought that he could be more useful as a volunteer. But for Antonina, returning to Kyiv was out of the question. Sashko wrote me that Antonina was intent on going with or without him. So he decided he was going too. But they weren’t sent right away.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We’re waiting here for the transfer.

Weeks passed. Then at the end of May, Sashko got back in touch.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hi, Courtney. Sorry for not responding to you right away.

Things had been busy, he said.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And on Wednesday, that’s tomorrow, we are going to Mykolaiv. Mykolaiv is a city in the south of Ukraine. It’s close to Odessa.

Mykolaiv, Sashko explained, was part of the New frontline in the war. Like in Mariupol to the east, the Russians had managed to cut off water to Mykolaiv, forcing many of the city’s half a million residents to flee.

Before leaving for the south, Sashko and Antonina were sent home to Kyiv for a few days. Their apartment hadn’t been damaged in the shelling. And for the first time in the three months since they signed up for the territorial defense, they were able to sleep in their own bed. And with the Russians no longer anywhere near the city, cafes and shops were open again.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN We were walking around the city, and I felt like I was walking next to a fish tank looking at people who are having their lattes. And the war seemed very real, but this life in Kyiv, the peaceful life seemed like something impossible. And I could physically feel it. I felt weak at my knees, and I had a strange feeling in my stomach and everything seemed so unstable.

And I just can’t pull myself together. Everything feels like a very bad, meaningless movie without the end. And the worst thing, the thing that I’m afraid most is that the war is going to be for like two, three, five, eight years more.

Sashko and Antonina met up with a friend from the theater world while in Kyiv. But Sashko could only think about war. He no longer related to his past life, and he was distracted by his upcoming deployment.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And the thing that I’m worried about is that in the new battalion, maybe there will be like real army people with strong hierarchy. I have an idea that in Mykolaiv in that new battalion, I’m going to be more open about my sexuality. Like I’m not going to wait if anyone asks or I’m not going to let them be guessing.

A few days later, I heard from Sashko again. They had made it to Mykolaiv.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hey there, Courtney. Hope you’re hearing me OK.

They’d begun digging trenches in anticipation of a new Russian offensive.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN And today when we met our commander, and he was like getting acquainted, speaking to us, giving his speech, he said, I’ve had gay guys in my unit before and it was no problem with them. So if I see or hear any cases of homophobia, this unit is not a place for homophobia. Is that clear? And we are not going to talk about that again.

He said, I don’t care who you are or what you do until you break the rules. So if you’re a good fighter, then I’m OK with you.

Russian troops were sending a near-constant stream of bombs and missiles toward Mykolaiv. Huge swathes of the city had been burned to the ground or completely destroyed. But on one quiet evening, I was able to talk to Sashko by phone. And I asked him to tell me more about what happened with his commander.

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN He said, I know that there are guys in our unit who are gay. Like, he just looked at me and I raised my hand like, here I am, hello.

He made the things clear, you see.

And how did the other people in the unit respond?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN They were like, OK. Yeah. They didn’t say much. I mean, the way they talk, they are not like some narrow-minded, homophobic savages. What I expected because I expected the worst. Army is still a world of manly men, but we are not — I mean, I don’t feel threatened physically and I feel much more confident now. I really feel like here I just have to be like a good soldier. And that’s like some guarantee that at least the commanders will protect me if anything happens. But I’m sure that nothing bad will happen.

A few weeks later, I got this message from Sashko. OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Hey, Courtney. Sorry for taking so long to respond to your message. Here’s just another piece of information, which I think is important to see a bigger picture of what’s happening here in Ukraine. So yesterday I think, that was yesterday, L.G.B.T.Q. person was beaten.

And that happened when the guy was going to give an interview about his boyfriend who had died in this Russian-Ukrainian war. And at that time, a group of young men came up to him and they attacked him. And they started shouting homophobic things and they beat him.

I don’t know what to add.

Over many months of conversation, Sashko and I had talked a lot about his hopes for the future and for the future of Ukraine. So many of them revolved around his uncertainty of what version of the country would greet him and Antonina if and when the war finally ended. But one time, I’d gotten a different answer.

Do you think about the future?

OLEKSANDR ZHUHAN Yeah, I sometimes stop and think about the future. And I’m trying not to make some great plans like, oh, I’m going to write a play about this war or I’m going to, I don’t know, to write a song. Just very, very small things, down to earth things. Like my mom, she lives in the Central Ukraine.

And they bought a house in the village. And they went there yesterday for the first time. And she sent me a video and she said, we’re waiting for you and Antonina to come and live there and repair it because the house is very old. And there’s a garden with fruit trees. And I was, oh my God, yeah. I’d really love to do that, mom.

lulu garcia-navarro

“First Person” is a production of New York Times Opinion. We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode. Today’s episode was produced by Courtney Stein. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Lisa Tobin with help from Kaari Pitkin. Engineering by Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud.

Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. The rest of the first person team includes Cristal Duhaime, Christina Djossa, Olivia Natt, Derek Arthur and Jason Pagano. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Kate Sinclair, Jeffrey Miranda, Paula Szuchman, Irene Noguchi, Patrick Healy and Katie Kingsbury.

July 7, 2022

Produced by ‘First Person’

Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians of all backgrounds have come together to fight their common enemy, Russia. But for some Ukrainians, that enemy holds particular terror. In Russia, gay people are routinely targeted for their identity — arrested without cause and even tortured. That’s what motivated Oleksandr Zhuhan to join the volunteer Territorial Defense Forces, despite experiencing homophobia in Ukraine.

[You can listen to this episode of “First Person” on Apple, Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]

Before the war, Zhuhan said, he avoided places with “stereotypically heterosexual men.” So when he enlisted in February, he went back into the closet, telling his fellow soldiers that he and the partner he was serving alongside were “friends.” In the months since, Zhuhan has been fighting two battles: one for his country and one for his identity.

Warning: This episode contains explicit language.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Image07fp-ukrainian-solider-image-articleLarg

Credit…Antonina Romanova

“First Person” is produced by Derek Arthur, Christina Djossa, Jason Pagano, Cristal Duhaime, Olivia Natt and Courtney Stein. The show is edited by Kaari Pitkin, Stephanie Joyce and Lisa Tobin. Scoring by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta, with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. The executive producer of Opinion audio is Irene Noguchi, and the director of New York Times audio is Paula Szuchman. Special thanks to Jeffrey Miranda, Kate Sinclair, Patrick Healy and Katie Kingsbury.

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