Ukraine’s Same-Sex Marriage Campaign ‘Russia Is Homophobic’: We Want To Be Different

Ukraine has increased support for the rights of LGBTQ+ people since Western-looking leaders came to power in 2014. Discrimination in the workplace was banned, but same-sex marriage or civil partnerships have not been legalized.
Inna Sovsun, a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, believes that the government has been "dragging its feet for many years now" over the issue. This week she put forward a bill in parliament to legalize same-sex relationships.
Sovsun told Euronews that over 700,000 people are serving in the Ukrainian army and some of them are LGBTQ+ people. These LGBTQ+ people have partners, but they cannot in any way make their relations official. He said, “So in case anything happens to the military person on the battlefront, his or her partner would not be able to make any medical decisions about the partner. Or if the worst happens, if death happens, if the person is killed, again the partner would not have the legal opportunity to make decisions about the burial and all of that. So that kind of adds the urgency to this situation."
The risk is far from theoretical. Olena Shevchenko of the human rights group Ukraine Insight told us there are "real stories, which you see almost every day" on the battlefield.