DThe connection is bad and keeps dropping. It rings – two, three, four times. There he is again. A brief “Hello!” before the still image freezes again. Then nothing for hours. Try again later in the evening. “I’m sorry,” says Viktor Pylypenko. For days, there has been hardly any network where he is at the moment. But now, after many unsuccessful attempts, we are lucky – the connection holds.
Viktor Pylypenko, like so many other women and men, has been fighting for the freedom of his country since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is a lot at stake for all of them, and perhaps especially a lot for Pylypenko: he is an openly gay man. At the time of our conversation, he is at the front, somewhere near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Of course, he doesn’t name his exact position: “Too dangerous.” For weeks he kept us up to date on his current situation. Photo and video material bear witness to exhausting weeks in the fight against the Russian aggressor.
“After a long time, today was finally a quiet day again,” says the 36-year-old, lighting a cigarette. Pylypenko is a medic. In his unit, the “Black Cossacks”, he rescues and treats wounded soldiers. Only the day before yesterday he had to bring a young comrade from the dangerous “red” zone to the “yellow”, less dangerous one. The young man had stepped on a land mine. “The mine ripped off his foot, but we were able to save him. He’s only 20.” During battles, Pylypenko and his driver drive around picking up the wounded and dead, administering first aid and treating wounds. Just a few days ago there was a massive attack on them by eight Russian tanks. Any help came too late for two soldiers in his unit, they were burned in their tanks.
“I’ve never belonged to that part of the population that accepts everything in silence”
When Pylypenko isn’t defending his freedom at the front, he’s working at a film production company and campaigning for the rights of the LGBTIQ community in Ukraine as the founder of the “Association of LGBT Soldiers, Veterans and Volunteers.” It is the largest organization of its kind in Eastern Europe. After coming out in 2018, Pylypenko was considered Ukraine’s first openly gay war veteran.
As early as 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, he volunteered for the Donbass battalion and gained initial operational experience there. But Pylypenko was also at the forefront during the Maidan revolution and – at that time still as a student – at the time of the Orange Revolution in 2004, when the Ukrainians took to the streets for free elections. “I’ve never belonged to that part of the population that accepts everything in silence. I went to a military high school and I represent humanistic ideas. I knew I couldn’t sit still while the Russian imperialists wanted to destroy a free Ukraine.”
