GLR May-June 2026

Keeping Queer Culture Alive in Wartime Kyiv INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM

sistance , released in 2023, followed the lives of young LGBT Ukrainian soldiers fighting to defend their country. “A lot of people joined the army,” they said. “A lot of people are being killed. This loss is on so many levels; it’s present and it’s felt. The queer community now in Kyiv has a big wound that is bleeding, and this loss just keeps happening and happening.” There’s no question but that Ukraine is deeply divided on LGBT issues, including marriage equality. But the presence of LGBT military service members and Rus sia’s connection to far-right, anti-LGBT ide ologies have tempered some of the most extreme vitriol against the community. An October 2025 survey by the Kyiv Inter national Institute of Sociology found that eighteen percent of Ukrainian respondents had a positive feeling about LGBT people, with 45 percent feeling neutral and 33 per cent negative. Yet the percentage of people saying that LGBT people in Ukraine should have the same rights as other citizens has grown from 63 percent in 2022 to 78 per cent in 2025. Several relatively high-profile cases of

F INBARR T OESLAND T HE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine fell on February 24th, just days after Russian forces launched a major missile and drone attack against Ukraine, predominantly targeting the region surrounding the capital city of Kyiv. Close to fifty missiles and 300 drones battered the nation’s energy sector, damaging residential buildings and railways, killing a man, and leaving more than a dozen people wounded in Kyiv alone. Power outages were by then the norm in the city, where winter temperatures reached as low as five degrees Fahrenheit. Sidewalks and roads were covered in heavy snow and black ice, making travel by car or foot treacherous. As positive developments failed to materialize at the trilateral talks in Geneva between Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S., Ukrainians continued to live their daily lives in seemingly impossible conditions. Members of Kyiv’s queer community have been working to keep creativity alive as their city undergoes seismic changes. Queer nightlife and connection are still pos

sible across the capital, even with midnight curfews, which have turned nights out into evenings out, typically running from 5 to 11 PM. Nightclubs like K41 and Closer are well known for being queer-friendly and of fering a truly safe space for Kyiv’s LGBT community to meet. “It keeps changing every year; it gets more difficult,” said Angelik Ustymenko, a queer artist and activist. “A lot of people have left, and it’s heartbreaking to think that some of them are not planning to come back, and the community we used to have will not be back again.” Before the invasion, Ustymenko and their collective Rebel Queers used street graffiti to communicate with each other. “For queer people who live in the city and who also feel lonely in a way, writing something on the wall kind of tells them: ‘Hey, you’re not alone,’” they added. The community quickly unified around the idea, and more LGBT people across several cities in Ukraine began sharing their own graffiti with Rebel Queers . The arrival of war changed the trajectory of Ustymenko’s artistic career. Their docu mentary Rebel Queers: Ukraine’s Queer Re

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Ashley P. Jones explores how digital games can facilitate acts of political play and initiate change in the empirical world.

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