The Unicorn Battalion
LGBTQ soldiers of Ukraine fight for the country and their rights amidst the chaos of war.
On a rainy June day in the center of Kyiv, pride flags, Ukrainian and European Union flags were getting soaked. About 500 people gathered for a Pride march that will last only an hour and will span just about a hundred meters. The city of Kyiv and the police gave a permit for the march but limited it to one and a half city blocks, citing security concerns.
It wasn't a typical pride the residents of New York, Berlin, or Amsterdam would expect to see on the streets of their cities. The first two rows of the parade goers were either active duty military or veterans holding signs calling upon the EU and other partners of Ukraine to provide more weapons. Other signs were calling for an end to the Russian genocide of Ukrainians, for demining systems, and to free Azovstal defenders - prisoners of war held in Russia and reportedly tortured. There were slogans for equality, for a bill to legalize civil partnerships, and to give protections to LGBTQ people.
Now, with her fiancé, Diana Harasko, by her side, Maria embodies resilience and defiance, having faced overwhelming homophobia and challenges on the frontlines.
Maria Volia, 31, and her fiancé Diana Harasko, 25, stood in the first rows holding hands. For Maria, a servicewoman of the 47th Brigade, this moment had been a long way coming.
Last year, on October 24th, 2022, Maria has given up. She was on the phone with Diana and told her she would be taking her life. She planned to do it with an overdose of Gidazepam, a selectively anxiolytic benzodiazepine, which is typically prescribed for anxiety and panic attacks.
LGBTQ soldiers of Ukraine fight for the country and their rights amidst the chaos of war.
On a rainy June day in the center of Kyiv, pride flags, Ukrainian and European Union flags were getting soaked. About 500 people gathered for a Pride march that will last only an hour and will span just about a hundred meters. The city of Kyiv and the police gave a permit for the march but limited it to one and a half city blocks, citing security concerns.
It wasn't a typical pride the residents of New York, Berlin, or Amsterdam would expect to see on the streets of their cities. The first two rows of the parade goers were either active duty military or veterans holding signs calling upon the EU and other partners of Ukraine to provide more weapons. Other signs were calling for an end to the Russian genocide of Ukrainians, for demining systems, and to free Azovstal defenders - prisoners of war held in Russia and reportedly tortured. There were slogans for equality, for a bill to legalize civil partnerships, and to give protections to LGBTQ people.
Now, with her fiancé, Diana Harasko, by her side, Maria embodies resilience and defiance, having faced overwhelming homophobia and challenges on the frontlines.
Maria Volia, 31, and her fiancé Diana Harasko, 25, stood in the first rows holding hands. For Maria, a servicewoman of the 47th Brigade, this moment had been a long way coming.
Last year, on October 24th, 2022, Maria has given up. She was on the phone with Diana and told her she would be taking her life. She planned to do it with an overdose of Gidazepam, a selectively anxiolytic benzodiazepine, which is typically prescribed for anxiety and panic attacks.
Diana and Maria have been dating for just a few weeks. It's been about three months since Diana, a civilian volunteer from Bila Tsekrva, messaged Maria on Instagram, responding to one of the stories from muddy trenches near Bakhmut. "How are you? Although it's probably a stupid question given your circumstances", the message said. After a couple of weeks of exchanging messages online, Diana came to Kramatorsk and proposed on a first date.
Now she listened to Maria's raspy voice saying her final goodbye. Diana panicky dialed the number of Maria's commander. Thankfully he picked up the phone. A few minutes later medics were rushing to Maria.
Three weeks after her suicide attempt, I met Maria for the first time. In the visitor's room of the Acute Psychiatric Ward for Women at a large hospital complex outside of Dnipro, she was sitting at a table with a plastic tablecloth, wearing her fleece with a rainbow badge, not exactly sure how she got there.
"I don't have a home anymore, I don't have any rights. What am I fighting for?", she asked me. Her frustration built up from a feeling of not being accepted or understood by her people and her country even after almost ten years of service.
Maria volunteered in the Army at 22 after seeing Russia taking Crimea and sparking the war in Eastern Ukraine. Her city, Mariupol, was briefly taken over by pro-Russian separatists, and liberating it was one of the more significant wins for the Ukrainians in the summer of 2014. After signing up for the service, it wasn't long before she noticed signs of sexism from the soldiers around her. She'd hear things like "war is not a place for a woman" and see how male soldiers were treated with more trust and respect by the command.
She wanted to prove herself. Full of idealism, she fought for the right to be assigned to the front. Eventually, she got deployed to Pisky as a radio specialist with the 56th Brigade, where one of the fiercest battles for the Donetsk airport took place.
After active deployment, she stayed in the service and was stationed in her hometown with the 56th Brigade until winter 2022. And that is when the city became a place of a brutal stalemate between encircled Ukrainian troops and the massive, overwhelming force of the invading Russian Army. After taking heavy losses, her unit, along with the soldiers from the 36th Marine Brigade and the 1st Marine Battalion, got barricaded in the Illych metal factory. They attempted to break through the encirclement and leave the city. On the first attempt, they used armored vehicles and failed. The second attempt, this time on foot, paid off, and they could bypass the Russian patrols and checkpoints unscathed and unnoticed and sneak out from the besieged city shortly after midnight of March 12.
They were a group of 45 soldiers walking silently in the dead of night. Ahead laid an arduous journey through the forests and steppe of the Donetsk region to reach Ukrainian-controlled territory. With no cell reception, limited provisions and no information on where the current front line is, they ventured into freezing thick darkness.
The group stayed in abandoned houses, hunted for rabbits, and cooked chickens they stole from deserted farms. They split into three groups of fifteen to avoid detection - one later being captured by the Russians. Maria's group got spotted by Russian soldiers on the 8th day of their march when they were attempting to cross a river near the village of Staromaiske - just a few kilometers away from the Ukrainian-controlled territories at the time. A firefight ensued, and Maria took a bullet in her left arm. But the river crossing was a success. They reached Velyka Novosilivka and a Ukrainian checkpoint five hours after that fight.
On the edge of passing out and with a tourniquet on her arm, she was taken to a hospital. On the 21st of March, Maria sat on a hospital bed, filmed by her friend Nastya smiling and saying that she couldn't wait to go to Dnipro and get a takeaway from McDonalds.
But the McDonalds in Dnipro was closed, like most other businesses. The country was scrambling to fight its land-hungry neighbor's massive invasion, and the ever-changing frontline was burning. Ukraine needed its soldiers, and Maria, yet again, was sent into the thick of it, now towards Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
The previous experience made Maria reevaluate things, and she decided to speak freely about her sexuality. Her injury and the realization of how fragile everything around her was made her not care about other people's opinions.
After coming out as a lesbian to her brothers-in-arms, she started talking publicly about her experience of being a queer person in the service. Her posts on social media about life in trenches near Bakhmut attracted attention from both supporters and critics.
Homophobic comments and messages were piling up and were so overwhelming that they were pushing Maria to depression. Her fragility, caused by her recent experience in Mariupol, her coming out, and being sent back to the front were among the things that pushed her to attempt suicide. “I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I didn’t want to even try…” she said.
Maria, with support from Diana, has eventually recovered and recently transferred to the 47th Brigade. She now serves on the Eastern front and took a leave to visit the Kyiv Pride. A day before the Pride march in Kyiv, she came upon a group of young people, most of them teenagers holding banners supporting "Traditional Values," and argued with them, filming herself. The next day, during Pride, she held her fiancé's hand in defiance of all those who disapprove of her way of loving someone.
After the speeches were over, flags and banners folded, the crowd slowly dispersed. Not five blocks away on Khreschatyk Street, a few hundred people - mostly young men wearing black shirts and hoodies spilled out of another gathering for "Traditional Values." Tipped off where the Pride was held, they ran, clashing with the police and desiring to reach the Pride goers. It didn't matter to them that they were running to fight people who were actively defending their country.
Most Ukrainians had generally disapproving views on non-heterosexual unions before the war, but polls show that public opinion has shifted considerably during the full-scale invasion. The most recent poll conducted by the National Democratic Institute and released in February 2024, had more than 70 percent positively answering the question "Should LGBT+ people have the same rights as others?" while in 2019, the number was below 30%.
But Ukrainian legislation is lagging far behind. Despite years of campaigning from various human rights and LGBTQ organizations as well as well as pressure from the EU, the Ukrainian Parliament hasn't passed hate-crime laws to include acts against gay or trans people. Besides that, any non-heterosexual union is not recognized by the law, and the Ukrainian Constitution states that marriage is a union of a man and a woman.
Inna Sovsun, a 39-year-old Ukrainian MP from the Holos party, is trying to address the most pressing issue for non-heterosexual couples in the time of the war, especially those who serve - to pass a law that will give the same protections a traditionally married couple would have under Ukrainian laws. One of the most urgent needs for LGBTQ service members in wartime Ukraine is basic legal recognition for their partners or spouses as a family member.
For now - a same-sex couple, or any non-heterosexual couple, has zero legal rights as a unit. For military families it plays a particular importance in cases of death, disappearance, being taken prisoner or being seriously injured. Your partner, in the eyes of the law, is a stranger to you and, therefore, can not make legal, medical, posthumous, or any other decisions a heterosexual partner in a moment of crisis would have access to.
The bill with the number 9103 was registered in the Ukrainian Parliament in March 2023 but has yet to make its way to the Ukrainian Parliament's floor for the vote. It has passed some important milestones, receiving approval from the Minister of Justice and the Ministry of Defense. However, after a year and a half since its registration, it is still unclear when the bill will be voted on, if ever. As of now, it seems hopelessly stuck in the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on Legal Policy, which is tasked to give the bill a legal mark and vote for it to be either passed on to the floor of the Parliament or to another committee or to be killed altogether.
Inna Sovsun co-wrote the bill with a lawyer Maria Klyus, whose close friend, Petro Zhyrukha is a bisexual man serving in the Ukrainian Army. Petro is one of a rather small group of Ukrainian servicemen who are open and public about their sexual orientation.
Petro is 28. He is a classically trained musician who never imagined being in the army. However, he felt compelled to defend his homeland against Russian aggression and volunteered immediately after the invasion.
Initially, his sexuality wasn't an issue, but as homophobic jokes began to surface, Petro found himself needing to adjust his behavior to fit in with his new surroundings. He'd laugh at the jokes and try to fit in.
Once, his commanders said he hoped that his unit had none of "those people". Petro felt queasy. On another occasion, a soldier from his unit said that he'd "kill a faggot” if he saw one.
His parents never knew, and neither did his fellow soldiers. But at some point, Petro got tired of hiding this part of his identity and decided to come out. "I chose this hetero-membrane and had to modify my speech, behavior… I didn't want to do it anymore". In June of 2022, after four months of service, he told the people from his unit. The reaction was bad. There were looks and whispers. Other soldiers didn't want to stand in line for showers with him or sit next to him. But little by little, conversation by conversation, things have shifted. A guy who said he'd "kill a faggot” if he saw one, after meeting Petro said that now he would not. He'd never met a gay person before, he explained.
Maria Klyus, Petro's friend and a deputy of Inna Sovsun was worried about him. Petro thought she was losing sleep over his coming out. One day, Maria called Petro and told him about the bill they were drafting. He was shocked. He was in disbelief that someone would do such a titanic amount of work to protect him and others like him. Although the bill covers a wide area and benefits any civil partnership, he took the gesture very personally and wanted to support it however he could.
At that point, not many outside his unit knew about his sexuality, and he initially intended to keep it that way. But after a phone call with Maria, he decided he would start a government petition to support the bill. This meant putting his name on a piece of paper that would reveal his sexual orientation to everyone. "If I'm not ready now, when will I be?" he asked himself.
However, he never came out to his parents. Understanding the impact and publicity this gesture would result in, he knew his name would become public, and he didn't want them to find out from the news.
Petro placed a call to his father and asked to be put on speakerphone. After an exchange of How are you's, he said, "I have to share something very important to me," and paused before saying that he likes men as well as women. His mom immediately yelled at him, saying, "Petro, my god, I thought someone died!". His father said calmly that he will always shake his hand no matter who he liked.
Petro's heart soared. His whole adult life, he had been afraid of this moment, and there it was—a gigantic stone had been lifted off his chest.
With the help of an NGO, he drafted a petition in support of Bill 9103 and registered it on the President's website. Petitions like that have no legal ramifications, but they are intended to show support from the public. Once a petition collects 25000 signatures, it lands on the President's desk, and the President writes their recommendations and comments. Once the petition was online, the social media frenzy has started. Petro's phone started lighting up every few minutes - dozens of messages and calls with words of support, appreciation and, sometimes, disbelief. Now Petro has come out to the entire country.
"I was free", he said. The soldier who wanted to "kill a faggot” when he saw one, said that he'll sign the petition.
The Army officials try to avoid the subject of LGBTQ rights like it's an infectious disease, and when the circumstances require addressing any questions regarding gay or trans service members, the Ministry and the Army officials typically try to exhibit plausible deniability. In a note of non-support that the Ministry of Defense issued in response to Bill 9103 shortly after its introduction, it originally was stated that "the information about thousands of military servicemen who cannot officially formalize their relationships with same-sex partners, set out in the explanatory note to the draft law, needs additional study due to the lack of relevant data in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine."
In a move that was seen as awkward and cringeworthy by many LGBTQ rights activists, the Ministry of Defence has decided to conduct such a study by issuing a poll among some of the service members, basically asking, "Are you gay?".
"Questionnaire for the study of issues of sexual orientation, the need for registering of civil partnerships and issues in this specific area" - a printed form containing seven questions about gender discrimination within the unit where the respondent served, sexual preference in choosing a partner, and question on either a respondent, if in a same-sex relationship, potentially would face "problems" with inheritance if they were to be injured, killed or declared missing in action.
Maksym was one of the servicemen who received this questionnaire. His description of the process painted a picture of a lack of education, empathy, and basic humility among those tasked with collecting answers.
Maksym, a closeted gay man in the ranks of the Ukrainian Air Force, recounted how, one morning, a senior officer in his company distributed the questionnaire without any explanation. The attitude seemed to be: here is a pen and paper, do whatever you want. The crowd around Maksym became rowdy, with gay insults and jokes filling the room. Some airmen declined to fill out the questionnaire. Maksym later saw one form lying on a table marked with big block letters saying, "I'M NOT A FAG."
The officer returned later to collect the forms, sometimes peering at them as he picked them up from the pilots. "That was a mockery of anonymity," said Maksym. Later, the same officer returned with a few more forms, saying they needed to be filled out to meet the quota. A few airmen were absent—either injured or on leave—and the command required the exact number of forms to be returned. "Who wants to help out with the fag test?" the officer asked.
It's unclear what the fate of this poll was, and whether it led to anything. The body tasked with addressing equality within the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Department of Humanitarian Support of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, has not responded to repeated attempts to contact them regarding this article.
After speaking with four MOD staffers, none of whom wanted to go on record, and after going through Ministry's documents online, I was not able to find a single official program dedicated to fighting discrimination against LGBTQ personnel or educating rank and file on the LGBTQ topics, or even an acknowledgment that queer people are in the ranks. The Ministry of Defense does have a hotline for sexual abuse and violence, as well as mechanisms for handling it.
An openly gay staffer of the Ministry of Defence who also did not want to go on record told me that people who are responsible for equality and gender issues often lack basic knowledge about anything that goes beyond the manual issued by the Ministry.
At the same time, the same person told me that they understand that there are much more pressing issues for the country in times of war, and unless there is an overwhelming problem in the Armed Forces that needs addressing, it's often put on the back burner.
Questions related to LGBTQ issues in Ukraine have already created some headaches for the current government. A recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights involved two Ukrainians, Andriy Maymulakhin and Andriy Markiv, who claimed that the Ukrainian government denied them the same rights afforded to heterosexual couples. The couple has cohabitated since 2010 but has been unable to register as domestic partners. According to their filing, they attempted to register as a married couple on seven occasions, but all applications were denied. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, Mr. Mykhaylovych joined the National Guard and served for a year before being discharged for health reasons.
A Ukrainian judge in the European Court, Mykola Gnatovskyy, voted in favor of the decision. The Ukrainian government defense council used bill 9103 as a defense, claiming that Ukraine is already implementing the necessary laws to protect same-sex couples. The court, however, rejected the argument, citing that the bill is not yet a law. The European court's decision is now a pain in the neck for the Ukrainian government. Besides the restitution they must pay the couple, it now hangs over Ukraine's head on the path to the much-desired membership in the EU.
But from the Brussels courtrooms to Kyiv government corridors to muddy trenches near Avdiivka lies a great distance. While lawmakers, generals, and judges weigh in, LGBTQ Ukrainians who serve are experiencing not only a lack of recognition in the eyes of the law but also severe discrimination. Their stories and personal suffering often disappear into the abyss of endless death and destruction that overwhelms the entire country every single day. "It's not timely" rings across comments on social media from critics. "It's not timely," repeat the lawmakers at the Committee on Legal Policy, according to the transcripts of their most recent deliberations discussing Bill 9103 in July 2024. After having the bill on their agenda for over a year, it still has not been voted on.
But for those individuals, the personal trauma of not being recognized or respected for who they are is very timely. More so, it is ever-present.
Henadzi Aprosimau, a 25-year-old bisexual Belarusian man and a soldier in the ranks of the International Legion, crossed the Ukrainian border on a warm July night in 2020. He carried papers indicating he was entering the country for a medical procedure. Packed light, his belongings—slippers, shampoo, and a few pairs of underwear—fit into a single backpack.
Five days earlier, while at home in Minsk, Henadzi received a phone call from a nearby police precinct requesting he appear for a "friendly conversation." He knew what that meant. Several of his friends who attended such conversations were threatened with incarceration if they continued any "recidivist" activity, and some were already jailed.
Belarusian authorities were cracking down on any form of dissent following the ongoing anti-government protests in the country that summer, gradually imprisoning activists one by one. Journalists, students, doctors, and college professors were getting whisked from their apartments or off the streets, starting with those who were more visible.
Henadzi was an active participant in the protests, and his name appeared as an organizer in several social media posts; he knew the role that was already scripted for him by the Belarusian authorities. So he packed his bag and, after arranging logistics with BYSOL, an organization that helped Belarusian dissidents find a way out of the country, headed to Kyiv.
A newly found home suited Henadzi. After a few months had passed, he stopped being spooked by black vans and people in police uniforms. He found a place to live and continued with his activism from Kyiv. He surrounded himself with people from the diaspora, which had grown considerably after the new wave of repressions started in Belarus. "I was continuing to fight for Belarus", he says about his time in Kyiv.
But he was not planning to fight for Ukraine. The Ukrainian government had continued flirting with Lukashenko's dictatorship, and even though many Belarusian expats ended up in Kyiv seeking protection from the regime, it wasn't a safe space. Visa-free travel and lax security allowed Russian and Belarussian intelligence services to operate in Kyiv almost freely. In August 2021, one of the most vocal Belarusian activists, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a forest not far from his apartment. The death was ruled a homicide and never solved. In 2022, Dzianis Stadzhi, a Belarusian journalist critical of the Belarusian regime who had lived in Ukraine since 2018, was beaten, tortured, and drugged for several days in his own apartment in Kyiv. When Dzianis stopped answering his wife's calls, she rushed to Kyiv from their family hideout in Western Ukraine and found him unconscious, tied up, and wrapped in plastic bags, inches from death. Their apartment was turned upside down, and electronic storage devices were stolen. Suspicion fell on Belarusian government operatives, but Ukrainian police did not arrest anyone in connection with the assault and torture.
Henadzi saw the war in Ukraine as the start of the liberation of Belarus. In March 2023, he enrolled in the International Legion, partially motivated by the thought that he would gather experience to continue the fight to liberate Belarus from the dictatorship when the time came. After three months of training, he was sent to the northern border with Russia, and then joined the fight on the Eastern Front.
Henadzi had been open with people in his life about his sexuality. It caused problems in the past - particularly a fallout with his religious family. But in the Army's structure, he felt it wasn't safe to talk openly about this part of his life. The rank and file in the International Legion are mostly foreign volunteers - mainly Americans and Europeans who, on average, have more progressive views, with Ukrainian commanders who are significantly more conservative and, according to Henadzi, occasionally openly homophobic. "I am trying to avoid this subject altogether," he told me. "I don't want to be shot in the back".
That seems like an overly dramatic fear, but in an environment that is numb to violence and where homophobia is rampant, being gay presents a real threat. In war, you rely on a person next to you for your well-being and, oftentimes, your life.
So besides being courageous and setting an example, for a service person who is open about their sexuality, it often means putting a target on their back.
When Henadzi was transferred to a new outpost in December 2023, a new deputy commander of the battalion noticed him wearing a patch featuring a unicorn - a symbol of the Ukrainian union called LGBT Military, and asked him, "What's this faggot thing doing on your uniform".
Henadzi held his tongue. His life depended on the decisions that this commander would make in the future.
The unicorn patches became a uniting symbol and an identifying mark of the LGBTQ community among the service members in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Issued by the LGBT Military Union - a grassroots organization fighting for the rights of the queer members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, both open and closeted - it has about 400 members, with less than a quarter of them being open. Victor Pylypenko, the founder of the union and the first openly gay man in the Ukrainian Military, has been at the forefront of defending those who decided to come out and protecting those who are not ready to do so.
Not carrying any specific weight besides being open about their sexuality, these patches are a statement. However, they open both doors for allies and homophobes, and by wearing them on their uniform, these soldiers accept a level of risk of being targeted.
"I know there are gay people in the military who are not interested in joining our group either maybe because they don't know about us or they aren't interested in potential unwanted publicity," says Viktor. Being outspoken himself, he has been paid back with multiple public attacks, mainly from the members of conservative groups, far-right organizations, pundits, as well as members of the clergy.
The most recent scandal was the recall of an award that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decorated several members of Viktor's unit of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade for "Self-sacrifice and love for Ukraine," and then recalled his medal saying that the Philaret "did not know about the sinful tendencies" of one of the recipients of this medal. Then it was noted that "Patriarch Filaret and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church without exception takes a principled negative stand on the sin of Sodom and condemns the propaganda of the so-called same-sex marriages." After this embarrassing medal pirouette, several members of the 72nd Brigade have given back the award, most with harsh public criticism of the Church.
This is neither the first nor likely the last instance of confusion and tension over the divide in Ukrainian society on LGBTQ issues. Viktor has borne the brunt of these attacks as the public figure representing LGBTQ members of the Military. He has become a target not only for critics within the country but also for Russian propaganda, which tends to portray homosexuality as one of the poisonous fruits of the sinister Western World.
In the summer of 2021, even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a rant by Olga Skabaeva, a Russian propagandist and pundit on Russian TV, really took the cake when she announced on her program that "President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the advice of American leader Joe Biden, is sending 'columns of Ukrainian homosexuals to Donbas'." This was based on an earlier announcement on the LGBT Military Facebook page that said, "We invite motivated LGBT+ people, military personnel, specialists, as well as people friendly to the LGBT+ community, who want to sign a contract with one of the motorized infantry units of the Armed Forces."
That announcement was immediately picked up and taken apart by right-wing and conservative powers in Ukraine and eventually made its way to Russian TV. A totally fictitious tale of the "Unicorn Battalion" was born.
Viktor, again, was fiercely criticized by people inside the country as an "agent of the Kremlin" while simultaneously providing more fuel to the never-idling Moscow propaganda and disinformation machine.
Neither the Unicorn Battalion nor a gay-friendly platoon was ever formed, but Viktor continued his fight. He recalls the words of one commander he served with who said to him "If the gays create their unit and call it the battalion of unicorns, then I will accept them." In a sort of cheeky response to criticism and falsehoods, the logo of the LGBT Military featuring a unicorn was created.
Victor's fight is a fight of other union members. One of the most prominent cases has become one of former sailor Pavlo Lagoyda.
Pavlo is 23 and now lives in Kyiv. He is one of the most outspoken members of the LGBT Military union, but, like Victor, he has been harassed and prosecuted for it. The same way he suffered for his desire and willingness to be open.
After being excommunicated from his family by his mother after being outed, Pavlo joined the Navy. It was September 2021, and he was just 19 years old. The big war loomed over Ukraine. A few months later, when the missiles were raining down on towns and villages all over the country, his mother called him: "I accept you for who you are," she said crying, "Just come back home alive." He wondered why the war and his being in the service was what it took his mother to appreciate him and show acceptance, but Pavlo now had to go to war.
According to Pavlo, the issues with his commander, Lieutenant Major Leonid Bondarenko, started soon after he found out about Pavlo's sexual orientation. Pavlo says he was outed by other sailors in his orlop when he left the phone unlocked and open on the communication with his ex. When he returned, he found his shipmates laughing. "So you're a fucking faggot?" one of them grinned at Pavlo.
Soon, everyone knew, including his direct superiors. Lieutenant Bondarenko not only allowed other soldiers to beat Pavlo but became an abuser himself. It started with jabs at his sexuality and verbal harassment and eventually escalated to physical violence.
The first beating took place on a night watch in the spring of 2022 when Pavlo was approached by Lieutenant Bondarenko and reprimanded verbally for looking at his phone. Pavlo said they argued, Lieutenant Bondarenko tackled him, pinned him on the floor, and beaten him. The second beating happened later in November in front of witnesses - this time over a quarrel on how to best unload a supply truck. Bondareko's superiors couldn't ignore it and re-stationed Pavlo but did not reprimand Bondarenko.
The text chain between Pavlo and his commander is volatile. Mr. Bondarenko calls Pavlo "a sociopath" and tells him he should be studied for medical journals because of his "sickness." Using profane terms, Pavlo responds with threats to sue him and the unit. Then it switches to even-toned conversations about reports and questions about switching units and demobilization. Strings of unanswered texts and calls appear first from Pavlo, then from Mr. Bondarenko.
From the phone and paper trail between them it seems like Mr. Bondarenko doesn't want Pavlo to go anywhere and enjoys the intricate and routine torture through his power over his subordinate. He sends him on meaningless tasks, to various medical and psychological examinations, but doesn't allow him to transfer or change the contract. Pavlo said he had sent him on two psych evaluations where doctors, without examining him, gave him a diagnosis that categorized him as "not fit for active duty." Lieutenant Bondarenko says the psych evaluations were not initiated by him and were done independently because sailor Lagoyda was trying to switch to contract service and switch to another unit.
Pavlo later appealed through the Ministry of Defence and was sent to an examination in Kyiv where the decision was overturned, and he was deemed healthy and fit for active duty. His lawyer confirms his account.
Lieutenant Bondarenko claims that he never saw the final diagnosis of psychiatric evaluation that Pavlo received on appeal, even though in the private text exchange with Pavlo he admits seeing the results simultaneously accusing Pavlo that they are a fake.
Lieutenant Bondarenko has also said to me that Sailor Lagoyda was just a bad soldier and an insubordinate one and was beaten by others not for being gay but for his general attitude and behavior. He also accused his subordinate of selling sex to other sailors. He didn't deny beating him himself.
In the sprint of 2024, a law was signed by President Zelenskyy allowing all conscripts who started their compulsory service before February 2024 to be demobilized. Pavlo at the time was desperately trying to change units. He jumped on the opportunity and put in his papers. A month later, he flipped his middle finger leaving his base. He was free from under his oppressor.
Bullying, harassment, and even physical violence are not unheard of in the Army. In many cases, the fate of a vulnerable person under someone's command depends on how the commander handles the situation. With the absence of education on LGBTQ+ topics among the rank and file of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it often comes down to whether the commander will allow abuse or, as in Pavlo's case, perpetrate it himself.
But it's not always like that.
Oleksandr Zhuhan, 39, and Antonina Romanova, 38, met on a clear and warm September day of 2014. One of those autumn days when you still try to catch a last bit of disappearing summer. It was another era in Ukraine. A telltale sign of that was that they met through a Russian dating website that was still widely used in Ukraine even as Crimea was annexed, and the war in the East of Ukraine had already started.
Antonina has recently moved to Kyiv from Crimea, where, after being an active participant in pro-Ukrianian protests, her activism landed her on arrest lists. One of her activist friends, Oleg Sentsov, advised her to leave the peninsula. She did, while Oleg stayed, later being arrested himself and imprisoned for five years on bogus terrorism charges.
Oleksandr wasn't in a festive mood that evening. He was coming from a meeting where he was consoling a friend whose child was diagnosed with a complex form of autism. Antonina was wearing an old-fashioned ribbed jacket over a sweater. Oleksandr thought she looked ridiculous. They walked around with oversized takeaway cups, drank lattes, and talked. As it turned out, they had few things in common: kids with disabilities, their dispassion for Kyiv's broken infrastructure, and love for theater and art. They talked about Antonina's complex childhood, the multiple surgeries she had to undergo as a child, and her path from her lost home in Crimea to the capital. They sat by a group of teenagers, admiring the music kids played from a portable speaker. They caught the last subway train home.
Ten years later, Antonina and Oleksandr share a room in a dilapidated house a couple of kilometers from the active frontline. It's been a long journey since their first date on that warm Kyiv evening. Behind - an experimental theater troupe they started, plays and performances they staged together and separately, endless soirées and long nights after premieres. Their lives were full - teaching, performing, loving. They got a small apartment together and they were happy.
From that apartment, they were calling their actors to cancel the February 24th performance in the winter of 2022.
The big war has come to their lives. That night, Antonina asked "Should we join in?" and Oleksandr reluctantly agreed. The next day, they were signing their names onto the volunteer sheets at a local Territorial Defence chapter. There were men and women of all ages - some looked like they came straight from work; someone had come carrying their belongings in a suitcase, a burly-looking man was wearing a cowboy hat, and one guy brought a hunting rifle.
Looking at this motley crew, Oleksandr thought to himself, "If they can do it, we can, too."
Fear of not being understood was, undoubtedly, present. "I thought to myself - there will be all these combat-ready meatheads, and who am I, a little theater teacher," Oleksandr says. But to their surprise, their status as a queer couple was met with understanding. They were open about it from the start of their deployment, and the word spread. By the time they got sent to the South after the Kyiv campaign, their commanders and fellow soldiers all knew that "there are gays" serving with them.
At the end of May 2022, their company was sent to Mykolaiv. Antonina and Oleksandr reported to the morning alignment, where a new master sergeant introduced himself. "I know there is a gay couple among your ranks", he barked. Antonina's heart fell. "I do not care! As long as you are good soldiers, we won't have any issues". He followed, "I won't tolerate any discrimination".
Without an official policy on same-sex couples from the Ministry of Defense, things like that are up to lower-ranking commanders. Some, like that master sergeant, addressed what he treated as a potential issue among his rank and set the record straight from the get-go, but most often it falls on the shoulders of people like Oleksandr and Antonina to educate their fellow soldiers on LGBTQ+ topics.
"It isn't our job to teach them," says Oleksandr. But when Oleksandr starts talking about LGBTQ community online, he faces criticism, and often from the military personnel - that he is using his uniform to propagate LGBTQ values. And that annoys him. "I would have had a much wider platform elsewhere to fight for equal rights," Oleksandr notes. "And my goal in the Army is the same as everyone else here: to win this war."
Thus, each individual experience varies depending on a commanding officer's education and prejudices. In Antonina and Oleksandr's cases, they lucked out at every stage of their service. In June 2022, they were introduced to a new commanding officer, who asked Antonina which pronounce he should use when addressing her. "It was his first question to me," Anotnina recalls. "I was stunned".
Antonina is a non-binary person who uses "she/her" pronouns. She and Oleksandr are incredibly close, although they stopped dating about a year ago. "We've been together for 10 years through fire and water," Antonina says. I am certain I will never have a tighter relationship with anyone else in this life."
They sit together in a dimly lit room like they sat ten years ago on cold asphalt listening to teenagers play music with their lattes in paper cups on that warm Kyiv evening. The active front, where they were just hours ago, is a short drive away. They will repeat that drive shortly after I leave, not as a couple, or lovers, or old friends but as two service members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces heading on another task fighting for their country and for their right to be who they are for themselves and for the generations ahead of them. Despite the difficulties they have faced, their love keeps them going. It fights for them as they fight for their country.
Love is what also kept Anna Kazhan going all her life. Anna is a medic in the 47th Brigade and someone who has gone against the grain most of her life. Her call sign, Kazhan, means Bat in Ukrainian. She likes the sound of it, but more so - the bats themselves. Anna is now 31 and has been studying nocturnal winged creatures since her early 20s - she got a Bachelor's degree in Molecular biology and biotechnology and a Master's in Vertebrate zoology. She was in her 4th semester in Gent, Belgium, studying Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems when the full-scale invasion started. That event made her return to Ukraine and enlist in the Army, something that she would never think of doing before.
If there was a dictionary illustration for a left-wing activist in Ukraine, Anna would probably be it. Since her adolescence, she has been brewing in the leftist stew of her native Kharkiv. She took part in organizing an anarchist squat (which also helped house LGBTQ activists as well as displaced people from the annexed Crimea and the Eastern regions of Ukraine in 2014), she was a co-founder of the Kharkiv Pride, an organization advocating for LGBTQ rights in Ukraine, and she took part in organizing the first Pride parade in Kharkiv in 2019.
That first Pride was pivotal in her life. On Freedom Square in the center of Kharkiv, there she stood with some 2000 others who came to support the event. Around them, a police in riot gear and a line of trucks separating them from another group - a variety pack of right-wing crusaders from various groups and organizations including Freikorps, the National Corpus as well as Tradition and Order. "Every Pride event is used by these right-wing guys as a team-building exercise", Anna says with a dash of dark humor "they get together, meet up, hang out and show what they're capable of".
And on that day they were capable of a lot of violence. They clashed with the police and the LGBTQ activists, one teenage boy got severely beaten in a nearby park, and several arrests were made. It made splashes in the Ukrainian media, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine issued a note of condemnation, and Amnesty International typed up a public statement.
Four years later, when Anna was already in the 47th Brigade, she met Kostya, who served in her medical unit. Kostya was also on the Freedom Square in 2019, except he was on the other side of the barricades. An admirer of right-wing views, he was a part of Freikorps - a far-right group that, on that day, was fighting with the police and hunting parade-goers. Kostya and Anna talked, trying to keep a safe distance. These conversations became regular. Kostya was an intellectual guy who wrote poetry, a stark contrast with other right-wing-oriented people Anna encountered in her life and through her service.
One day, trying to sum up one of these debates, Kostya pointed to a battle map hanging on the wall of their medical headquarters. "This is the only thing that matters now," he said.
They were discussing an incident with one of the Kharkiv pride founders Anna Sharyhina who publicly spoke against renaming of a street in Kharkiv in honor of Georgi Tarasenko, who was a member of Freikorps and who was killed in action near Kharkiv in March, 2022. Then, Sharyhina posted on Facebook that Tarasenko was a known right-wing figure and violently targeted LGBTQ activists on multiple occasions. Her post also evoked a question - who should be the people Ukrainians put on the pantheon of heroes in this war, and what should be written off or forgiven to those who give their life defending their country.
It was a nuanced post that sparked a very lively but difficult discussion, dashed with hateful messages and threats, as well as words of support fr Mrs. Sharyhina. It's easy to understand her motivation - for her, people like Georgi Tarasenko were a threat to her very existence. He wasn't just a person opposed to gay marriage or equal rights for LGBTQ people - he was a violent individual who targeted her and the people she advocated for. But he also died fighting the Russians who came to invade the city they shared with the intention to occupy it and make it part of Russia, where any LGBTQ activism is now criminalized.
In war-time Ukraine, the military is a reflection of the Ukrainian society itself; it's a country within a country - with all its complexities and inner conflicts, its many voices and camps. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life have volunteered, been mobilized and drafted in the last two and a half years. And just like in the Ukrainian society itself, LGBTQ people in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are a minority - a minority that is easier to target and discriminate against but needs to be protected.
Anna Kazhan disagreed with the Facebook post of her former colleague, with whom they organized Kharkiv Pride back in 2019. But she knows the feeling of being threatened, criticized, and argued with for being who she is. Recently, she found herself in a car with yet another sympathizer of far-right ideology on their way to visit a medical base of the Azov Brigade. Her former girlfriend worked there and arranged the visit. Anna joked that it's the LGBTQ community bringing the far-right to Azov base. They talked about issues and values. They argued and joked around.
"Next pride we'll drop a charge from a drone on you guys", the far-right guy said laughing. "We'll get the jammers installed", she rebottled. And then there was silence. They both knew that they might not live til the next pride. They kept driving.
Dolphins in the Donbas Sunflowers
for Reporters magazine special issue, text by Larysa Denysenko
Recognizing yourself in a new woman. While the doctors at the UNBROKEN Center are doing all they can to remove the traces of the war from Olena’s face, she has found the strength to show other women how beautiful they already are.
When Olena was a girl, she dreamed of having a pet monkey. Her mother laughed and said, “Once you have a family, you can get a monkey.” And once Olena became a teacher of chemistry and biology and gave birth to her first son, her mother asked, “So, my dear, how about that monkey?” Olena laughed and replied, “Thanks, mom, I’ve got one already.” Now Olena wants nothing more than to hug her mother. Ninety-two years old, her mother is sure—despite living under occupation, despite the war that brought her daughter physical pain and took away her home—that she will live to see that day.
The endurance of mothers throughout the ages and across cultures, and particularly the trials faced by Ukrainian mothers have taught them how to wait. To wait for their children, despite everything, for
the chance to hug them and reminisce about the monkey, to break into innocent laughter, to cry from the joy of being together, and to embrace again.
EVERYTHING IS ALIVE
Olena went into teaching because she was home-schooled by her mother, and her friends would come over after preschool and tell her what went on there. It was so fascinating to make comparisons
and imagine how she herself would teach! Plus, chemistry is a very practical science, particularly relevant in the factory-rich cluster of cities in the east around the Siverskyi Donets River. This helped her explain to the children, most of whose parents worked in those factories, why people need chemistry.
“Chemistry is a hard science, no wonder they begin teaching it once children have a grasp of math. It’s very practical, it helps you understand how drugs are made and how to remove a stain. Chemistry is an adventure where kids learn to see how one reagent can affect the whole process. Quality education is a dream of mine, and it’s impossible to teach chemistry if you don’t have enough reagents to run experiments.
I want every teacher in every village to have everything they need to make kids fall in love with their subject,” says Olena. She wanted to grow flowers, to raise and teach children—both her own and schoolchildren, to study the natural world, like these oaks that support the winds when those want to rest or lay low, like the pines planted by the locals with their able hands, like the endless fields, covered with smiling sunflowers and aromatic grasses, full of happiness and a feeling of home, moments of joy without a thought that all this could be destroyed by an enemy who mercilessly aspires to kill every living thing.
Here’s the most horrible thing about the war’s quotidian evil: you can go out to gather linden flowers in your home city on a bright June day in 2022, and spot the giant wings of a butterfly among the leaves,
wreathed in aromatic buds, and imagine your family sipping the tea made from this fragrant harvest, and a moment later the sharp fragment of an enemy missile pierces your forehead.
A stranger finds you, amidst deafening silence, moaning, and the smell of wounded people. You are taken to Dnipro, where—after three weeks of the doctors fighting to save you and you to save yourself—you finally return to life. And then you end up in a city you had always dreamed of visiting—interesting, wonderful Lviv.
Only this is not how you imagined bringing your dreams to life. You ended up here “thanks to” the enemy. But now Olena is here, she is receiving care, her serious facial injury needs lots of attention, multiple operations, rehabilitation. Her soul needs regeneration, and her eyes, which radiate her inner beauty, must begin seeing everything that is happening around her.
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN LOVE
“When I came to after one of the operations, I was all alone, alone in a city where I didn’t know anybody, alone in the ward. I felt so sad and awful, so I made a rule: to look for the good, no matter how bad or painful things were. To find the light in the darkness. And when I realized that I’m alone in the ward—it was so upsetting, so sad—suddenly I thought, this is good! It’s good that I’m alone; it means that other people are okay, alive, well. Since then this has been my rule for staying grounded,” Olena shares.
Lviv, where Olena now resides in a modular housing village for internally displaced people, has become familiar and homey. Along with some other women, she keeps a garden of her favorite plants
and flowers, just like at home, and sings in the choir Spivanochka [Singing Lady]. She never imagined herself singing in a Roman Catholic church, it’s like somebody else’s life, although it’s really her, her delicate, ringing voice woven into a garland of women’s voices. Her voice soars up to the Mother
of God, to the place where the prayers, entreaties, tears and curses of all mothers waft and resound—it’s never quiet there.
The women often talk about the cities they come from. They lead each other on virtual tours of the cities, villages and towns to which they will most certainly return.
Cities, like people—the ones who’ve left us and the ones that we’ve left—keep living for as long as people remember them. Love does not depend on where you live, whether out of necessity, temporarily or permanently.
Love lives in us. When you close your eyes and keep walking along the streets of the city where you first fell in love, where your husband meets you at the maternity ward, and you hush your newborn with a whisper that you’re going home and, look, here it is, your home. It smells like linden blossoms, like a freshly ironed nice floral dress, like berry juice and herbs. When you first step into the classroom, so full of love for the children that you can’t explain it; you can explain chemistry, biology, math, and lots of other sciences, but how do you explain this love?
RECOGNIZING YOURSELF IN A NEW WOMAN
Now in Lviv, Olena is learning to make pysanky2. “Where I come from, we didn’t have this tradition. We colored Easter eggs with grasses, vegetables, we boiled them in cereal grains. I like drawing these patterns, learning something that’s new for me, but for others is an ancient art.” These group activities—singing, performances, art therapy, making pysanky — help people feel like part of a family, even
if just a little bit.
Feeling a sense of family, connection and humanity is very important to Olena. She considers the people at the UNBROKEN Rehabilitation Center as family because of their warmth, responsibility and support. “People must not lose their humanity. Our capacity to support each other is one of life’s greatest gifts. There is a lot you can learn, even from animals and how they take care of—and rescue—one another.”
Of course there are difficult moments, when your head aches unbearably, when your body tests the limits of your invincibility, when your days are organized by antibiotics and probiotics, when the dark sea of emotions seethes and painful memories wash over you.
When you have experienced this kind of trauma, when you lose a part of you life, when there is so much that you, a grown woman, are beginning to learn only now, you have to hang on and learn to accept help, learn to recognize yourself in this new woman and keep teaching children remotely, and have faith that tomorrow will be a new day when you are stronger. “I’ll think about it tomorrow.” How many Ukrainian women, as they endure difficult, unbearable times, recall these words spoken by Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the Wind?” Scarlett spoke these words to herself during the American Civil War. And now Olena does the same.
If you think about it, this expression is not saying that you don’t have to think about the difficult things today; it’s not about immaturity, nor is it about burnout or weakness. It’s saying that tomorrow will
be, that tomorrow exists for this particular woman, and she will exist in this tomorrow;
and she will surely think of something, she’ll pull herself together and find a way out, she’ll be able to solve the problem, no matter how difficult it is. She’ll overcome the pain, and soothe the pain of others, no matter how great it may be. For the future lives in this expression; it is alive, weaving its intricate horizons, much like the lace curtains in the house that the enemies forced her to abandon.
A woman’s power is multiplied by motherhood, along with the responsibility and sense of inner fulfillment it brings. The mystery of feeling more than one life within you, of giving life—this prevents you from giving in to circumstances. No matter how old a child is, a mother thinks about them
and wishes to protect them, teach them and be proud of them. Olena has two sons, who motivate her to keep living, and this is a great force that multiplies her own strength many times over.
Support from other women is another source of strength. Olena remembers the women in the ward after her operation, how they supported her when she could not fathom how to go on living, or what comes next, or what, ultimately would become of her face? This emotional roller coaster and uncertainty, her faith in people and their support, along with her inner strength, led her up to do something she had never done before—a photoshoot, along with sharing the story of what had happened to her. Now she’s become that woman, the kind who supports other women.
It’s not easy to have your picture taken after an operation. Olena saw this as a chance to show other women who have been injured in airstrikes or in accidents that they are very brave, that each one of them has this courage, along with beauty; that each one of them deserves support; that life goes on and they are beautiful and not alone in this world.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STEM
Take your time to delight in the world, live as long as you are alive,” Olena reminds herself periodically. She dreams of visiting the Carpathians; she loves mountains, nature, and the infinite, dizzying vistas. I imagine her there, this woman who loves life, delighting in her natural surroundings. She finds a Ukrainian orchid, Spiranthes spiralis, its white flowers resembling a double helix. You see these delicate flowers on one side, then they move to the other side, exposing the stem, and at that moment it seems
like the splendor has disappeared, it’s gone; but you have to look at the other side, and you’ll find those same white flowers with their light vanilla scent. “Find the light in the darkness.”
Olena dreams of walking into the classroom, looking into the eyes of her students, who are engaged in a rowdy dispute. She smiles and delivers her trademark line calling for reconciliation, “When you’re walking down the street and a dog starts barking at you, do you get on all fours and start barking
in response?” They laugh, and hug each other. She dreams of walking into the classroom and making sure all the reagents are there. Because chemistry brings magic to life—it’s a science for action, not just for the books.
Olena dreams of walking into her classroom in the Lysychansk lyceum. And when the wave of emotion—joyful and nervous—subsides, she’ll begin telling the children about her favorite subject, and for some reason she’ll see sunflowers through the window, waiting to be kissed by the sun, and her beloved dolphins from the liberated Ukrainian seas leaping out from among them. Of course, this can’t really
happen, I mean, what are dolphins doing in Luhansk Oblast? But nobody can take away our capacity for creating our own Ukrainian dream and seeing the light and flowers on the other side of the stem of life.
The boy in the blue mask
Text by Yevhenia Podobna - for Reporters magazine
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Nine-year-old Romchyk turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. Lviv doctors were not sure whether he would survive the trip abroad. Now, it’s already been two years since he started his recovery and rehabilitation in Germany.
Romchyk searched around looking his mom. After the first explosion, she had shouted to him, “Lie down!” But her words were interrupted by the second explosion. The blast threw him against the wall, and when he opened his eyes, everything was pitch black from smoke and dust, but through this darkness he saw a woman’s long hair among the rubble.
Mom.
Romchyk crawled over and gently, carefully stroked her hair. That’s when he saw the light and knew there was an exit somewhere. He had to save himself. He tried to stand but fell immediately—his right leg wouldn’t respond. So, he began to crawl toward the light. He was weak and had to catch his breath from time to time, sitting on the red-hot pieces of what was a hospital in the center of Vinnytsia just a few minutes earlier. The scorching rubble left deep burns on his body.
Summoning his strength, Romchyk made another attempt for the exit when a stranger scooped him up and ran with him to a car. The boy managed to tell the man his name and address. He remembers the man taking him to the ambulance paramedics, how they poured water on his burned hands, and then being placed on a gurney in the hospital before being wheeled away. And then, darkness enveloped him once more.
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HER HAIR
Yaroslav Oleksiv recalls that September day when he, a bayan player and lecturer of Lviv Musical Academy, came out of his department and encountered an unfamiliar accordionist. There were not enough rooms for everyone, so she had to practice in the hallway. Yaroslav immediately noticed her gorgeous long hair and natural beauty. He soon learned her name, too—Halyna. She had graduated from a music college in Vinnytsia and had come to Lviv to continue her studies. First, they talked for hours about music, then they went for a coffee, and in three years, they tied the knot.
The couple had a son, Romchyk. Upon her graduation, Halyna stayed at the academy as a lecturer, like her husband. When their son grew up, they started teaching him music, of course. Later, the boy took up ballroom and Latin American dancing.
And then, in February, Lviv—which was so far away from the front line just the day before—shook from Russian missiles. When the full-scale war broke out, Halyna’s sister invited her and Romchyk to Poland, but she couldn’t leave her beloved and decided that the family should stay together in such hard times.
That summer, despite the war, the academy began its admission campaign. Like every year, Yaroslav was a member of the admission committee. So, Romchyk and his mother went to visit his grandparents in Vinnytsia. Yaroslav was supposed to join them as soon as the exams were over.
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THE BLACK DAY
His smiling Halia and Romchyk, clutching a blue pencil—he had just received a coloring book at the hospital and was practicing. That was a photo Yaroslav received on July 14, 2022, in the morning.
In the hospital, Romchyk had an encephalogram done. They finished early, and he and his mom arrived at the next hospital, where the encephalogram was to be interpreted, ahead of schedule. The boy remembers how they stopped at a shop, where his mom bought him juice and a snack. Then they went back to the hospital and waited for their appointment sitting on the couch in the hallway, watching TV. He even remembers that on the screen there was a man and a woman preparing to fly somewhere.
Air raid alarms blared in both Lviv and Vinnytsia. The TV fell and broke into pieces after the very first strike.
Yaroslav Oleksiv learned about the Russian strike on Vinnytsia from the internet. He immediately messaged his wife, “How are you there?” But there was no answer. Then Yaroslav called his in-laws, and they told him his wife and son had planned to visit that very clinic in the city center that day. He had never waited so desperately for the “all clear” notification, signaling the end of the air raid alert. He hoped his family had gone to a shelter where there was no signal. But the “all clear” came and went, and no one called him back. His message remained unread. Later that day, Romchyk was found in the intensive care unit of a Vinnytsia hospital.
“I went to Vinnytsia straightaway; Romchyk was lying in the basement—due to continuous alarms, the intensive care unit had been moved there, because severely injured patients cannot be carried to the shelter every time. My son was bandaged all over, I could only see his swollen lips and a little bit of his ear. If I hadn’t been told it was him, it wouldn’t have been possible to recognize my son in such a condition,” says Yaroslav.
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That day, over 200 Vinnytsia residents and visitors were wounded by Russian strikes. Around 50 people were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Romchyk was among the most severely injured: 45% of his body was covered in burns, including his hands, back, legs, and buttocks. He also had severe damage to his respiratory system from smoke inhalation. The chances of survival with such burns are critically low. He also had a shrapnel wound to his head, a fractured left arm and torn muscles in his leg. Vinnytsia doctors performed the first surgery to remove the fragments. And here Romchyk was lucky again, if one can say so under these circumstances: the fragments had pierced his skull but did not reach his brain. Still, the boy’s condition remained critical. Local doctors, despite having done everything possible, acknowledged there were no chances to save the child there. It was crucial to find treatment options abroad as quickly as possible. Eventually, a hospital in Dresden agreed to accept Romchyk. But for him to survive the journey his condition needed to be stabilized, which took time.
On the same day, the tragic news reached the family. Halyna was found.
The family had held on to the hope that she was alive, perhaps unconscious in a hospital among the many injured, and they just hadn’t found her yet. Halyna’s parents and Yarolsav called local hospitals one by one, their hope fading with each call, as all the wounded women had been recognized.
“We came to the morgue. There were a lot of people lying in black bags there, about 30 or so. In one of them was our Halia, but the doctor who had examined her strongly advised us not to look. He gave us some distinctive features to identify her—letters from the remnants of her T-shirt, a metal brace from her braces... it was her. One of the relatives of another deceased insisted on opening the bag. They got sick and had to be taken away by an ambulance,” Yaroslav recalls.
Three days after the strikes in Vinnytsia, two cars headed to Lviv. One of them was the ambulance that took Romchyk to his chance for survival. The other, a bit later, carried his mother on her final journey.
Lviv became Romchyk’s first stop on his way to Dresden. He was taken to the UNBROKEN KIDS, where the doctors continued fighting to stabilize him for the next leg of his journey to Rzeszów, Poland, where a plane to Germany was waiting for the family.
Any delay in their journey could cost the boy his life. He remained in a coma, breathing with the help of a ventilator. The doctors in Vinnytsia gave them two oxygen tanks for the trip, so the driver had to reach the destination before they ran out. During the three days required to stabilize Romchyk’s condition in Lviv, Yaroslav had to bury his wife, but he had no time to mourn his loss.
“I had to collect myself and save my son. I knew his life depended on my decisions. At that point, I felt so bad I didn’t even realize how serious his condition was. I strongly believed in my son, that he would overcome everything and all would be okay,” says Yaroslav. “When we came to Lviv, I asked the doctor, among other things, ‘Will Romchyk be able to play the bayan, as his hands are so severely burnt?’ The doctor was shocked. She didn’t believe we would even be able to get him to the border, let alone get him to the point where he would play the bayan again.”
The road to Rzeszów was much more difficult. When the ambulance carrying Romchyk reached the nearest border checkpoint, it was closed, forcing them to go to another one. The road was rough, the ambulance could not go faster than 20 km/h, or the patient would bounce around inside.
The oxygen was nearly depleted. Nevertheless, at the next checkpoint the ambгlance was allowed through without delay, and one of the drivers, who had a flashing light on his car, offered to escort them to the airport. Lots of small wonders created one great one. Romchyk is alive, despite all the odds.
THE FAIRYTALE FOR THE SON
Hour after hour, his father sat in a chair in the intensive care unit, watching over his motionless Romchyk. Doctors kept coming in to replace the countless medications and drips. Yaroslav read aloud fairy tales for his son. He turned his son’s favorite music on—just as he did at home before bed—and talked to him constantly. He believed that somewhere there, in the darkness, his son could hear him and knew his dad was by his side.
On his fifth night in Dresden, Yaroslav was woken up by a phone call. The doctors asked him to come to the hospital immediately. He couldn’t speak German and didn’t understand what had happened to his son. He ran to the hospital in a panic, only to learn that a few hours after being disconnected from the ventilator, Romchyk had woken up and started calling for his family.
The first thing Romchyk asked when he came out of his coma was, “Have the firefighters and ambulance arrived yet?”
“He was still living in that day. I started to explain to him that a lot of time had passed, and we were far away, in another country. New patients were constantly being brought to the hospital by helicopter, and every time the sounds terrified him. I had to repeat to him, ‘It’s ok, we are far away, you are safe.’ And we didn’t really know whether we should tell him his mom had passed away or wait until he got better. But local psychologists advised us to share the truth immediately. He listened to us but was under such strong medication he appeared to barely understand anything— everything seemed blurred for him.”
For next two weeks, Romchyk woke up every day at dawn and spoke of everything he had gone through on July 14—how he went to the hospital with his mom, about two explosions, how he stroked his mom’s hair under the rubble, and how he got out of the burning room, burning his legs and buttocks on the hot debris. The boy repeated his story every morning, as if he was trying to speak out all the nightmare and pain of that day.
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At first, the German doctors started with the skin grafts—the surgeries were performed three times a week, and in between, they made complicated dressings, so painful they had to be done with anesthesia. Given the extent of the burns, the boy’s skin samples were sent to Berlin, where tissue was to be grown for further transplants.
Soon, the doctors shared the first bad news: his body did not accept the new skin due to an infection, and the antibiotics weren’t working. Also, they couldn’t do anything about his fever—occasionally they managed to bring it down below 40°C, but only briefly. Then came the second blow: the skin samples sent to Berlin were also infected, making it impossible to grow the skin out of them. Still, the doctors didn’t give up. They tried new medications until they found one that worked. In just a month, they managed to control the fever and fight the infection. New surgeries started.
Among the mountain of paperwork Yaroslav had to sign at the hospital — acknowledgments, consents, permissions— one day he was presented with a surgical consent form: it turned out that the leg injury was more serious than it seemed at first, the damaged muscle had to be removed, and the doctors were not sure whether Romchyk would be able to walk again. In fact, for the first three months, the boy was kept sedated, having gone through 27 surgeries in that time. The last one was a skin graft on the back of his head.
HIS STEPS
“When he was more or less conscious, I knew I had to get him interested in something to motivate him to fight. We decided he had to study. I got his assignments from his Ukrainian school; we would play the video files sent by his teacher on the TV in the ward and do math and reading for at least half an hour a day. Later, a teacher from a German school started coming—they have obligatory education even in the hospital. After his hospital stay, we were sent to the rehabilitation center near Dresden.”
After a few motionless months, Romchyk had to learn to control his body once again. His first attempts to work his muscles and learn to roll onto his sides had to be done with painkillers. Overcoming the pain, the boy learned to move his injured leg to the side. At first, he moved it just a few centimeters, gradually raising the amplitude. Finally, the moment came when Romchyk took his first few steps around the ward. That day was the happiest day for his family.
Every day, Romchyk pushed himself to walk farther— first three, then five steps, then a couple of meters. In three weeks, despite the doctor’s concerns, he walked steadily for half a kilometer, without any rest. By the time he was discharged, he and his father were walking five kilometers a day. Yaroslav constantly looked for new activities for his son to keep him curious and help his body recover. That’s how they started playing table tennis.
“It is important to motivate him constantly. I told him, ‘If you want to play the bayan again, we must work out your fingers. The sooner we finish the treatment, the sooner we will go home.’ When we put a specific aim before Romchyk, he was very persistent in his pursuit of it, and he eventually succeeded.”
During rehabilitation, Romchyk began wearing the blue mask, which covered his entire face except for his eyes, nose and mouth, along with knee-highs and mittens made of special compression fabric. He must wear them for two years to prevent scarring.
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THE BOY KEEPS GOING
In July 2024, the boy in the blue mask stood in the center of Vinnytsia with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. He was eager to come here—to the place where he had spent his last day with his mom. To the place where three Russian missiles had taken the lives of 29 people and left hundreds more shattered. Now, near the clinic, a small memorial stands—pigeons with yellow and blue ribbons and portraits of the deceased. One of the pigeons bears the image of his mother—a very beautiful woman with a gorgeous braid, and an inscription: Halyna Oleksiv, 29, PhD, teacher, musician. He brought flowers for her.
A nine-year-old boy turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. He won this war, no doubt. During these two years, contrary to medical textbooks and doctors’ predictions, Romchyk learned to walk and run, and much more. Although he still can’t lift his foot on his own, that hasn’t stopped him from returning to dance and even performing with his partner at the most prestigious dance competitions in the UK.
When he comes to Lviv, he continues his rehabilitation in the same place where his life was saved in the summer of 2022, at UNBROKEN KIDS. One day, he will surely play the bayan in front of the doctors.
Despite all his successes, his work on himself never stops. He still does special exercises all the time and works out in the pool. In autumn, another milestone awaits him—a hair transplant and then plastic surgery. Because of this, he won’t be attending school in Ukraine this year. In two years, he has learned German and not only speaks it fluently, but also helps his father with translations at appointments and consultations with doctors. However, Romchyk admits he would very much like to go home to Ukraine, to his room, to his grandparents.
Over these two years, he was the subject of dozens of stories and articles throughout the world, and a French director even made a documentary about him. Neither Yaroslav nor Romchyk refuse to speak to journalists, as they hope their story will inspire and support those experiencing hard times now. When we speak to the boy via a video call, he smiles. As if the two years of pain, 33 surgeries and so many challenges had never happened. He speaks so reasonably you forget there is a nine-year-old child in front of you. A child is unbelievably strong.
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“I do not experience any hardships,” says the boy in the blue mask on the other side of the screen, very seriously. “You just must be patient and know that if it is hard today, then tomorrow it will be better.”
Text by Yevhenia Podobna - for Reporters magazine
Nine-year-old Romchyk turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. Lviv doctors were not sure whether he would survive the trip abroad. Now, it’s already been two years since he started his recovery and rehabilitation in Germany.
Romchyk searched around looking his mom. After the first explosion, she had shouted to him, “Lie down!” But her words were interrupted by the second explosion. The blast threw him against the wall, and when he opened his eyes, everything was pitch black from smoke and dust, but through this darkness he saw a woman’s long hair among the rubble.
Mom.
Romchyk crawled over and gently, carefully stroked her hair. That’s when he saw the light and knew there was an exit somewhere. He had to save himself. He tried to stand but fell immediately—his right leg wouldn’t respond. So, he began to crawl toward the light. He was weak and had to catch his breath from time to time, sitting on the red-hot pieces of what was a hospital in the center of Vinnytsia just a few minutes earlier. The scorching rubble left deep burns on his body.
Summoning his strength, Romchyk made another attempt for the exit when a stranger scooped him up and ran with him to a car. The boy managed to tell the man his name and address. He remembers the man taking him to the ambulance paramedics, how they poured water on his burned hands, and then being placed on a gurney in the hospital before being wheeled away. And then, darkness enveloped him once more.
HER HAIR
Yaroslav Oleksiv recalls that September day when he, a bayan player and lecturer of Lviv Musical Academy, came out of his department and encountered an unfamiliar accordionist. There were not enough rooms for everyone, so she had to practice in the hallway. Yaroslav immediately noticed her gorgeous long hair and natural beauty. He soon learned her name, too—Halyna. She had graduated from a music college in Vinnytsia and had come to Lviv to continue her studies. First, they talked for hours about music, then they went for a coffee, and in three years, they tied the knot.
The couple had a son, Romchyk. Upon her graduation, Halyna stayed at the academy as a lecturer, like her husband. When their son grew up, they started teaching him music, of course. Later, the boy took up ballroom and Latin American dancing.
And then, in February, Lviv—which was so far away from the front line just the day before—shook from Russian missiles. When the full-scale war broke out, Halyna’s sister invited her and Romchyk to Poland, but she couldn’t leave her beloved and decided that the family should stay together in such hard times.
That summer, despite the war, the academy began its admission campaign. Like every year, Yaroslav was a member of the admission committee. So, Romchyk and his mother went to visit his grandparents in Vinnytsia. Yaroslav was supposed to join them as soon as the exams were over.
THE BLACK DAY
His smiling Halia and Romchyk, clutching a blue pencil—he had just received a coloring book at the hospital and was practicing. That was a photo Yaroslav received on July 14, 2022, in the morning.
In the hospital, Romchyk had an encephalogram done. They finished early, and he and his mom arrived at the next hospital, where the encephalogram was to be interpreted, ahead of schedule. The boy remembers how they stopped at a shop, where his mom bought him juice and a snack. Then they went back to the hospital and waited for their appointment sitting on the couch in the hallway, watching TV. He even remembers that on the screen there was a man and a woman preparing to fly somewhere.
Air raid alarms blared in both Lviv and Vinnytsia. The TV fell and broke into pieces after the very first strike.
Yaroslav Oleksiv learned about the Russian strike on Vinnytsia from the internet. He immediately messaged his wife, “How are you there?” But there was no answer. Then Yaroslav called his in-laws, and they told him his wife and son had planned to visit that very clinic in the city center that day. He had never waited so desperately for the “all clear” notification, signaling the end of the air raid alert. He hoped his family had gone to a shelter where there was no signal. But the “all clear” came and went, and no one called him back. His message remained unread. Later that day, Romchyk was found in the intensive care unit of a Vinnytsia hospital.
“I went to Vinnytsia straightaway; Romchyk was lying in the basement—due to continuous alarms, the intensive care unit had been moved there, because severely injured patients cannot be carried to the shelter every time. My son was bandaged all over, I could only see his swollen lips and a little bit of his ear. If I hadn’t been told it was him, it wouldn’t have been possible to recognize my son in such a condition,” says Yaroslav.
That day, over 200 Vinnytsia residents and visitors were wounded by Russian strikes. Around 50 people were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Romchyk was among the most severely injured: 45% of his body was covered in burns, including his hands, back, legs, and buttocks. He also had severe damage to his respiratory system from smoke inhalation. The chances of survival with such burns are critically low. He also had a shrapnel wound to his head, a fractured left arm and torn muscles in his leg. Vinnytsia doctors performed the first surgery to remove the fragments. And here Romchyk was lucky again, if one can say so under these circumstances: the fragments had pierced his skull but did not reach his brain. Still, the boy’s condition remained critical. Local doctors, despite having done everything possible, acknowledged there were no chances to save the child there. It was crucial to find treatment options abroad as quickly as possible. Eventually, a hospital in Dresden agreed to accept Romchyk. But for him to survive the journey his condition needed to be stabilized, which took time.
On the same day, the tragic news reached the family. Halyna was found.
The family had held on to the hope that she was alive, perhaps unconscious in a hospital among the many injured, and they just hadn’t found her yet. Halyna’s parents and Yarolsav called local hospitals one by one, their hope fading with each call, as all the wounded women had been recognized.
“We came to the morgue. There were a lot of people lying in black bags there, about 30 or so. In one of them was our Halia, but the doctor who had examined her strongly advised us not to look. He gave us some distinctive features to identify her—letters from the remnants of her T-shirt, a metal brace from her braces... it was her. One of the relatives of another deceased insisted on opening the bag. They got sick and had to be taken away by an ambulance,” Yaroslav recalls.
Three days after the strikes in Vinnytsia, two cars headed to Lviv. One of them was the ambulance that took Romchyk to his chance for survival. The other, a bit later, carried his mother on her final journey.
Lviv became Romchyk’s first stop on his way to Dresden. He was taken to the UNBROKEN KIDS, where the doctors continued fighting to stabilize him for the next leg of his journey to Rzeszów, Poland, where a plane to Germany was waiting for the family.
Any delay in their journey could cost the boy his life. He remained in a coma, breathing with the help of a ventilator. The doctors in Vinnytsia gave them two oxygen tanks for the trip, so the driver had to reach the destination before they ran out. During the three days required to stabilize Romchyk’s condition in Lviv, Yaroslav had to bury his wife, but he had no time to mourn his loss.
“I had to collect myself and save my son. I knew his life depended on my decisions. At that point, I felt so bad I didn’t even realize how serious his condition was. I strongly believed in my son, that he would overcome everything and all would be okay,” says Yaroslav. “When we came to Lviv, I asked the doctor, among other things, ‘Will Romchyk be able to play the bayan, as his hands are so severely burnt?’ The doctor was shocked. She didn’t believe we would even be able to get him to the border, let alone get him to the point where he would play the bayan again.”
The road to Rzeszów was much more difficult. When the ambulance carrying Romchyk reached the nearest border checkpoint, it was closed, forcing them to go to another one. The road was rough, the ambulance could not go faster than 20 km/h, or the patient would bounce around inside.
The oxygen was nearly depleted. Nevertheless, at the next checkpoint the ambгlance was allowed through without delay, and one of the drivers, who had a flashing light on his car, offered to escort them to the airport. Lots of small wonders created one great one. Romchyk is alive, despite all the odds.
THE FAIRYTALE FOR THE SON
Hour after hour, his father sat in a chair in the intensive care unit, watching over his motionless Romchyk. Doctors kept coming in to replace the countless medications and drips. Yaroslav read aloud fairy tales for his son. He turned his son’s favorite music on—just as he did at home before bed—and talked to him constantly. He believed that somewhere there, in the darkness, his son could hear him and knew his dad was by his side.
On his fifth night in Dresden, Yaroslav was woken up by a phone call. The doctors asked him to come to the hospital immediately. He couldn’t speak German and didn’t understand what had happened to his son. He ran to the hospital in a panic, only to learn that a few hours after being disconnected from the ventilator, Romchyk had woken up and started calling for his family.
The first thing Romchyk asked when he came out of his coma was, “Have the firefighters and ambulance arrived yet?”
“He was still living in that day. I started to explain to him that a lot of time had passed, and we were far away, in another country. New patients were constantly being brought to the hospital by helicopter, and every time the sounds terrified him. I had to repeat to him, ‘It’s ok, we are far away, you are safe.’ And we didn’t really know whether we should tell him his mom had passed away or wait until he got better. But local psychologists advised us to share the truth immediately. He listened to us but was under such strong medication he appeared to barely understand anything— everything seemed blurred for him.”
For next two weeks, Romchyk woke up every day at dawn and spoke of everything he had gone through on July 14—how he went to the hospital with his mom, about two explosions, how he stroked his mom’s hair under the rubble, and how he got out of the burning room, burning his legs and buttocks on the hot debris. The boy repeated his story every morning, as if he was trying to speak out all the nightmare and pain of that day.
At first, the German doctors started with the skin grafts—the surgeries were performed three times a week, and in between, they made complicated dressings, so painful they had to be done with anesthesia. Given the extent of the burns, the boy’s skin samples were sent to Berlin, where tissue was to be grown for further transplants.
Soon, the doctors shared the first bad news: his body did not accept the new skin due to an infection, and the antibiotics weren’t working. Also, they couldn’t do anything about his fever—occasionally they managed to bring it down below 40°C, but only briefly. Then came the second blow: the skin samples sent to Berlin were also infected, making it impossible to grow the skin out of them. Still, the doctors didn’t give up. They tried new medications until they found one that worked. In just a month, they managed to control the fever and fight the infection. New surgeries started.
Among the mountain of paperwork Yaroslav had to sign at the hospital — acknowledgments, consents, permissions— one day he was presented with a surgical consent form: it turned out that the leg injury was more serious than it seemed at first, the damaged muscle had to be removed, and the doctors were not sure whether Romchyk would be able to walk again. In fact, for the first three months, the boy was kept sedated, having gone through 27 surgeries in that time. The last one was a skin graft on the back of his head.
HIS STEPS
“When he was more or less conscious, I knew I had to get him interested in something to motivate him to fight. We decided he had to study. I got his assignments from his Ukrainian school; we would play the video files sent by his teacher on the TV in the ward and do math and reading for at least half an hour a day. Later, a teacher from a German school started coming—they have obligatory education even in the hospital. After his hospital stay, we were sent to the rehabilitation center near Dresden.”
After a few motionless months, Romchyk had to learn to control his body once again. His first attempts to work his muscles and learn to roll onto his sides had to be done with painkillers. Overcoming the pain, the boy learned to move his injured leg to the side. At first, he moved it just a few centimeters, gradually raising the amplitude. Finally, the moment came when Romchyk took his first few steps around the ward. That day was the happiest day for his family.
Every day, Romchyk pushed himself to walk farther— first three, then five steps, then a couple of meters. In three weeks, despite the doctor’s concerns, he walked steadily for half a kilometer, without any rest. By the time he was discharged, he and his father were walking five kilometers a day. Yaroslav constantly looked for new activities for his son to keep him curious and help his body recover. That’s how they started playing table tennis.
“It is important to motivate him constantly. I told him, ‘If you want to play the bayan again, we must work out your fingers. The sooner we finish the treatment, the sooner we will go home.’ When we put a specific aim before Romchyk, he was very persistent in his pursuit of it, and he eventually succeeded.”
During rehabilitation, Romchyk began wearing the blue mask, which covered his entire face except for his eyes, nose and mouth, along with knee-highs and mittens made of special compression fabric. He must wear them for two years to prevent scarring.
THE BOY KEEPS GOING
In July 2024, the boy in the blue mask stood in the center of Vinnytsia with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. He was eager to come here—to the place where he had spent his last day with his mom. To the place where three Russian missiles had taken the lives of 29 people and left hundreds more shattered. Now, near the clinic, a small memorial stands—pigeons with yellow and blue ribbons and portraits of the deceased. One of the pigeons bears the image of his mother—a very beautiful woman with a gorgeous braid, and an inscription: Halyna Oleksiv, 29, PhD, teacher, musician. He brought flowers for her.
A nine-year-old boy turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. He won this war, no doubt. During these two years, contrary to medical textbooks and doctors’ predictions, Romchyk learned to walk and run, and much more. Although he still can’t lift his foot on his own, that hasn’t stopped him from returning to dance and even performing with his partner at the most prestigious dance competitions in the UK.
When he comes to Lviv, he continues his rehabilitation in the same place where his life was saved in the summer of 2022, at UNBROKEN KIDS. One day, he will surely play the bayan in front of the doctors.
Despite all his successes, his work on himself never stops. He still does special exercises all the time and works out in the pool. In autumn, another milestone awaits him—a hair transplant and then plastic surgery. Because of this, he won’t be attending school in Ukraine this year. In two years, he has learned German and not only speaks it fluently, but also helps his father with translations at appointments and consultations with doctors. However, Romchyk admits he would very much like to go home to Ukraine, to his room, to his grandparents.
Over these two years, he was the subject of dozens of stories and articles throughout the world, and a French director even made a documentary about him. Neither Yaroslav nor Romchyk refuse to speak to journalists, as they hope their story will inspire and support those experiencing hard times now. When we speak to the boy via a video call, he smiles. As if the two years of pain, 33 surgeries and so many challenges had never happened. He speaks so reasonably you forget there is a nine-year-old child in front of you. A child is unbelievably strong.
“I do not experience any hardships,” says the boy in the blue mask on the other side of the screen, very seriously. “You just must be patient and know that if it is hard today, then tomorrow it will be better.”
A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots
for the New York Times - text by Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano - published on July 2, 2024
In a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently at work on a weapon of the future.
To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.
Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. No longer. Instead, after the drone locked onto its target — Mr. Babenko — it flew itself, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track him.
The motorcycle’s growling engine was no match for the silent drone as it stalked Mr. Babenko. “Push, push more. Pedal to the metal, man,” his colleagues called out over a walkie-talkie as the drone swooped toward him. “You’re screwed, screwed!”
If the drone had been armed with explosives, and if his colleagues hadn’t disengaged the autonomous tracking, Mr. Babenko would have been a goner.
Vyriy is just one of many Ukrainian companies working on a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology, driven by the war with Russia. The pressure to outthink the enemy, along with huge flows of investment, donations and government contracts, has turned Ukraine into a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.
What the companies are creating is technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has pushed a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.
To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.
Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. No longer. Instead, after the drone locked onto its target — Mr. Babenko — it flew itself, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track him.
The motorcycle’s growling engine was no match for the silent drone as it stalked Mr. Babenko. “Push, push more. Pedal to the metal, man,” his colleagues called out over a walkie-talkie as the drone swooped toward him. “You’re screwed, screwed!”
If the drone had been armed with explosives, and if his colleagues hadn’t disengaged the autonomous tracking, Mr. Babenko would have been a goner.
Vyriy is just one of many Ukrainian companies working on a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology, driven by the war with Russia. The pressure to outthink the enemy, along with huge flows of investment, donations and government contracts, has turned Ukraine into a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.
What the companies are creating is technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has pushed a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.
Viriy team at the FPV drone testing outside of Kyiv
The most advanced versions of the technology that allows drones and other machines to act autonomously have been made possible by deep learning, a form of A.I. that uses large amounts of data to identify patterns and make decisions. Deep learning has helped generate popular large language models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, but it also helps make models interpret and respond in real time to video and camera footage. That means software that once helped a drone follow a snowboarder down a mountain can now become a deadly tool.
In more than a dozen interviews with Ukrainian entrepreneurs, engineers and military units, a picture emerged of a near future when swarms of self-guided drones can coordinate attacks and machine guns with computer vision can automatically shoot down soldiers. More outlandish creations, like a hovering unmanned copter that wields machine guns, are also being developed.
The weapons are cruder than the slick stuff of science-fiction blockbusters, like “The Terminator” and its T-1000 liquid-metal assassin, but they are a step toward such a future. While these weapons aren’t as advanced as expensive military-grade systems made by the United States, China and Russia, what makes the developments significant is their low cost — just thousands of dollars or less — and ready availability.
Except for the munitions, many of these weapons are built with code found online and components such as hobbyist computers, like Raspberry Pi, that can be bought from Best Buy and a hardware store. Some U.S. officials said they worried that the abilities could soon be used to carry out terrorist attacks.
For Ukraine, the technologies could provide an edge against Russia, which is also developing autonomous killer gadgets — or simply help it keep pace. The systems raise the stakes in an international debate about the ethical and legal ramifications of A.I. on the battlefield. Human rights groups and United Nations officials want to limit the use of autonomous weapons for fear that they may trigger a new global arms race that could spiral out of control.
In Ukraine, such concerns are secondary to fighting off an invader.
Mykhailo Fedorov during a symposium announcing a global fundraising campaign with the United24, a governmental fundraising platform, to raise money for robotics during the war with Russia
“We need maximum automation,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, who has led the country’s efforts to use tech start-ups to expand advanced fighting capabilities. “These technologies are fundamental to our victory.”
Autonomous drones like Vyriy’s have already been used in combat to hit Russian targets, according to Ukrainian officials and video verified by The New York Times. Mr. Fedorov said the government was working to fund drone companies to help them rapidly scale up production.
Major questions loom about what level of automation is acceptable. For now, the drones require a pilot to lock onto a target, keeping a “human in the loop” — a phrase often invoked by policymakers and A.I. ethicists. Ukrainian soldiers have raised concerns about the potential for malfunctioning autonomous drones to hit their own forces. In the future, constraints on such weapons may not exist.
Ukraine has “made the logic brutally clear of why autonomous weapons have advantages,” said Stuart Russell, an A.I. scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has warned about the dangers of weaponized A.I. “There will be weapons of mass destruction that are cheap, scalable and easily available in arms markets all over the world.”
A Drone Silicon Valley
In a ramshackle workshop in an apartment building in eastern Ukraine, Dev, a 28-year-old soldier in the 92nd Assault Brigade, has helped push innovations that turned cheap drones into weapons. First, he strapped bombs to racing drones, then added larger batteries to help them fly farther and recently incorporated night vision so the machines can hunt in the dark.
In May, he was one of the first to use autonomous drones, including those from Vyriy. While some required improvements, Dev said, he believed that they would be the next big technological jump to hit the front lines.
Autonomous drones are “already in high demand,” he said. The machines have been especially helpful against jamming that can break communications links between drone and pilot. With the drone flying itself, a pilot can simply lock onto a target and let the device do the rest.
Makeshift factories and labs have sprung up across Ukraine to build remote-controlled machines of all sizes, from long-range aircraft and attack boats to cheap kamikaze drones — abbreviated as F.P.V.s, for first-person view, because they are guided by a pilot wearing virtual-reality-like goggles that give a view from the drone. Many are precursors to machines that will eventually act on their own.
Dev, 92nd Brigade
Efforts to automate F.P.V. flights began last year, but were slowed by setbacks building flight control software, according to Mr. Fedorov, who said those problems had been resolved. The next step was to scale the technology with more government spending, he said, adding that about 10 companies were already making autonomous drones.
“We already have systems which can be mass-produced, and they're now extensively tested on the front lines, which means they’re already actively used,” Mr. Fedorov said.
Some companies, like Vyriy, use basic computer vision algorithms, which analyze and interpret images and help a computer make decisions. Other companies are more sophisticated, using deep learning to build software that can identify and attack targets. Many of the companies said they pulled data and videos from flight simulators and frontline drone flights.
One Ukrainian drone maker, Saker, built an autonomous targeting system with A.I. processes originally designed for sorting and classifying fruit. During the winter, the company began sending its technology to the front lines, testing different systems with drone pilots. Demand soared.
By May, Saker was mass-producing single-circuit-board computers loaded with its software that could be easily attached to F.P.V. drones so the machines could auto-lock onto a target, said the company’s chief executive, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Viktor, for fear of retaliation by Russia.
A drone assembly and testing fascility in central Ukraine
The drone then crashes into its target “and that’s it,” he said. “It resists wind. It resists jamming. You just have to be precise with what you’re going to hit.”
Saker now makes 1,000 of the circuit boards a month and plans to expand to 9,000 a month by the end of the summer. Several of Ukraine’s military units have already hit Russian targets on the front lines with Saker’s technology, according to the company and videos confirmed by The Times.
In one clip of Saker technology shared on social media, a drone flies over a field scarred by shelling. A box at the center of the pilot’s viewfinder suddenly zooms in on a tank, indicating a lock. The drone attacks on its own, exploding into the side of the armor.
Saker has gone further in recent weeks, successfully using a reconnaissance drone that identified targets with A.I. and then dispatched autonomous kamikaze drones for the kill, Viktor said. In one case, the system struck a target 25 miles away.
“Once we reach the point when we don’t have enough people, the only solution is to substitute them with robots,” said Rostyslav, a Saker co-founder who also asked to be referred to only by his first name.
A Miniaturized War
On a hot afternoon last month in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, Yurii Klontsak, a 23-year-old reservist, trained four soldiers to use the latest futuristic weapon: a gun turret with autonomous targeting that works with a PlayStation controller and a tablet.
Speaking over booms of nearby shelling, Mr. Klontsak explained how the gun, called Wolly after a resemblance to the Pixar robot WALL-E, can auto-lock on a target up to 1,000 meters away and jump between preprogrammed positions to quickly cover a broad area. The company making the weapon, DevDroid, was also developing an auto-aim to track and hit moving targets.
“When I first saw the gun, I was fascinated,” Mr. Klontsak said. “I understood this was the only way, if not to win this war, then to at least hold our positions.”
Yurii Klontsak, an instructor working with DevDroid is demonstrating how to control the Wolly, a gun turret with autonomous targeting
The gun is one of several that have emerged on the front lines using A.I.-trained software to automatically track and shoot targets. Not dissimilar to the object identification featured in surveillance cameras, software on a screen surrounds humans and other would-be targets with a digital box. All that’s left for the shooter to do is remotely pull the trigger with a video game controller.
For now, the gun makers say they do not allow the machine gun to fire without a human pressing a button. But they also said it would be easy to make one that could.
Many of Ukraine’s innovations are being developed to counter Russia’s advancing weaponry. Ukrainian soldiers operating machine guns are a prime target for Russian drone attacks. With robot weapons, no human dies when a machine gun is hit. New algorithms, still under development, could eventually help the guns shoot Russian drones out of the sky.
Such technologies, and the ability to quickly build and test them on the front lines, have gained attention and investment from overseas. Last year, Eric Schmidt, a former Google chief executive, and other investors set up a firm called D3 to invest in emerging battlefield technologies in Ukraine. Other defense companies, such as Helsing, are also teaming up with Ukrainian firms.
Ukrainian companies are moving more quickly than competitors overseas, said Eveline Buchatskiy, a managing partner at D3, adding that the firm asks the companies it invests in outside Ukraine to visit the country so they can speed up their development.
“There’s just a different set of incentives here,” she said.
Oleksandr Yabchanka with his fellow soldiers at a testing range with the Roboneers machine gun mounted on the UGV
Roboneers, a Ukrainian company, developed an automated weapon with a gun turret mounted on a rolling drone.
Often, battlefield demands pull together engineers and soldiers. Oleksandr Yabchanka, a commander in Da Vinci Wolves, a battalion known for its innovation in weaponry, recalled how the need to defend the “road of life” — a route used to supply troops fighting Russians along the eastern front line in Bakhmut — had spurred invention. Imagining a solution, he posted an open request on Facebook for a computerized, remote-controlled machine gun.
In several months, Mr. Yabchanka had a working prototype from a firm called Roboneers. The gun was almost instantly helpful for his unit.
“We could sit in the trench drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and shoot at the Russians,” he said.
Mr. Yabchanka’s input later helped Roboneers develop a new sort of weapon. The company mounted the machine gun turret atop a rolling ground drone to help troops make assaults or quickly change positions. The application has led to a bigger need for A.I.-powered auto-aim, the chief executive of Roboneers, Anton Skrypnyk, said.
Anton Skrypnyk at the Robineers workshop in western Ukraine
Similar partnerships have pushed other advances. On a drone range in May, Swarmer, another local company, held a video call with a military unit to walk soldiers through updates to its software, which enables drones to carry out swarming attacks without a pilot.
The software from Swarmer, which was formed last year by a former Amazon engineer, Serhii Kupriienko, was built on an A.I. model that was trained with large amounts of data on frontline drone missions. It enables a single technician to operate up to seven drones on bombing and reconnaissance missions.
Recently, Swarmer added abilities that can guide kamikaze attack drones up to 35 miles. The hope is that the software, which has been in tests since January, will cut down on the number of people required to operate the miniaturized air forces that dominate the front lines.
During a demonstration, a Swarmer engineer at a computer watched a map as six autonomous drones buzzed overhead. One after the other, large bomber drones flew over a would-be target and dropped water bottles in place of bombs.
Swarmer field drone testing in Kyiv region
Some drone pilots are afraid they will be replaced entirely by the technology, Mr. Kupriienko said.
“They say: ‘Oh, it flies without us. They will take away our remote controls and put a weapon in our hand,’” he said, referring to the belief that it’s safer to fly a drone than occupy a trench on the front.
“But I say, no, you’ll now be able to fly with five or 10 drones at the same time,” he said. “The software will help them fight better.”
Swarmer drones during a field testing in Kyiv region
The Rise of Slaughterbots
In 2017, Mr. Russell, the Berkeley A.I. researcher, released an online film, “Slaughterbots,” warning of the dangers of autonomous weapons. In the movie, roving packs of low-cost armed A.I. drones use facial recognition technology to hunt down and kill targets.
What’s happening in Ukraine moves us toward that dystopian future, Mr. Russell said. He is already haunted, he said, by Ukrainian videos of soldiers who are being pursued by weaponized drones piloted by humans. There’s often a point when soldiers stop trying to escape or hide because they realize they cannot get away from the drone.
“There’s nowhere for them to go, so they just wait around to die,” Mr. Russell said.
He isn’t alone in fearing that Ukraine is a turning point. In Vienna, members of a panel of U.N. experts also said they worried about the ramifications of the new techniques being developed in Ukraine.
Officials have spent more than a decade debating rules about the use of autonomous weapons, but few expect any international deal to set new regulations, especially as the United States, China, Israel, Russia and others race to develop even more advanced weapons. In one U.S. program announced in August, known as the Replicator initiative, the Pentagon said it planned to mass-produce thousands of autonomous drones.
“The geopolitics makes it impossible,” said Alexander Kmentt, Austria’s top negotiator on autonomous weapons at the U.N. “These weapons will be used, and they’ll be used in the military arsenal of pretty much everybody.”
Nobody expects countries to accept an outright ban of such weapons, he said, “but they should be regulated in a way that we don’t end up with an absolutely nightmare scenario.”
Groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross have pushed for legally binding rules that prohibit certain types of autonomous weapons, restrict the use of others and require a level of human control over decisions to use force.
For many in Ukraine, the debate is academic. They are outgunned and outmanned.
“We need to win first,” Mr. Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, said. “To do that, we will do everything we can to introduce automation to its maximum to save the lives of our soldiers.”
The Master of the War Laboratory
for Der Spiegel
Oleksandr Kamyshin used to be an investment banker, and during the war he restructured the Ukrainian state railway. Today he is the Minister of Armaments and is supposed to get the ailing weapons industry up and running again. How does he intend to do that?
by Alexander Kauschanski - published on June 16, 2024
read the article
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The Master of the War Laboratory
for Der Spiegel
Oleksandr Kamyshin used to be an investment banker, and during the war he restructured the Ukrainian state railway. Today he is the Minister of Armaments and is supposed to get the ailing weapons industry up and running again. How does he intend to do that?
by Alexander Kauschanski - published on June 16, 2024
read the article
