Ukrainian military man, veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, writer, blogger and traveler, chief master sergeant of the 47th separate battalion

Babel Launches Everything's So Rainbow Podcast About LGBT+ Community During War. In six issues, the editor of "Babel" Yuliana Skibitska and the journalist Oksana Rasulova communicate with queer people - volunteers, soldiers, activists. These are dialogues on topics that are always timely - about human rights, war and how we can help each other. The heroine of the first issue is Anna Zyablikova, a queer activist and co-organizer of Kharkiv Pride. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Anna was abroad, then returned to Ukraine, helped refugees, and now serves in the "battalion of Valery Marcus Dovidek

Ukrainian military man, veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, writer, blogger and traveler, chief master sergeant of the 47th separate battalion. Yuliana Skibitska talked to Anya about her life abroad, relations with foreigners, about wartime Kyiv and about the problems faced by women in war and how they can be solved.

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Anya, I know that when the full-scale war began, you were in Brussels studying. Tell me what happened to you at that moment?

Ever since the fall, I felt that something was building up. In autumn [2021] I was in Italy. I wandered around the world. In the winter, I was in Kharkiv, went to takmed courses, with the same crazy, as they say, city crazy people. We were then looked at as if we were doing something extra. I used to buy a kit for an anxious backpack and say to my mother: "Here, mother, I bought you so-and-so, five to ten." And she just ate it all, because she didn't believe in the alarming backpack. She said: "Oh, snickers, class! I will take it with me on a trip." People didn't really believe that someone would need these alarming backpacks and knowledge of takmed.

When I left Kharkiv for training [two weeks before the invasion], I already had the feeling that I was running away from war. Because of this, it was quite difficult for me, because the war has not even come yet, and I am already running away from it. My psychotherapist said a very simple thing: if I wanted to go back and fight in the war, it would be much easier to do it from an unoccupied territory. I thought: ok, the war will come, and I had already evacuated in advance, it's such a multi-role. Of course, I was still worried. To distract myself, I fried pancakes, ate them with cream.

Have you been to Brussels then?

Generally in Ghent, this small town near Brussels. On the evening when the war began, everyone on Twitter was fired up. I remember reading somewhere in the early hours of the night that on Google Maps you can see a big traffic jam that stretches from Belgorod to us. Google collects this by the number of phones concentrated in one place. I thought - what should I do? To call Kharkiv and tell your relatives that "they are writing on Twitter that the occupiers are coming"? Well, they would send me to hell, and they would be right. So I just went to bed.

In Europe, they don't know what war is, because they haven't had it for eight years, like we have since 2014. How did the people around you behave during that period?

They treated me like a crystal vase. And it was, on the one hand, good, because at least no patterns of behavior were imposed on me. They didn't tell me to "get it together" or, on the contrary, "let's cry." People said: I can't imagine what it's like, so everything that happens to you is normal.

The Europeans understood that they also depended on the situation in Ukraine. But more in economic terms, in terms of what temperature they will have in winter, how many refugee children they will have in school. I lived with a sociology and history teacher, we had quite substantive conversations. When I said that we want NATO to close the sky to us, he replied that this would never happen, and argued why. On the one hand, it saved me from vain hopes. On the other hand, a person does not always need...

So much truth.

So.

I think that when rockets fly over your country and you are told that the sky will not be closed, it is not very pleasant to listen to. How long did you stay in Europe before returning to Ukraine?

Until the end of May. I tried to do something there on the spot, I worked with the voice of those people who at that time did not have the Internet, time and opportunity to communicate. Not only because of lack of knowledge of English, but simply because of a psycho-emotional state. I read everything that my friends wrote to me and continued to broadcast. The Austrian very beautiful queer magazine Vangardist published an interview with me called "What LGBT people fear about the occupation." It was published already on the night of February 24-25, and I am very proud of it, because I know how important it was to promote this whole topic in the media.

In addition, I talked about "Isolation", and not all people fully knew what it was. And even I, saying all these words about torture camps, about why LGBT people really don't want "Russian measures" on their territories, thought until the end that I was exaggerating a little. And then everything went smoothly! And I realized that then I not only did not exaggerate, but at all I did not imagine the scale of evil that would come to our land.

I will tell you more: we talked with Stas Aseev

The phrase 'captive experiencemeans nothing." Stanislav Aseev was a prisoner of "Isolation" in Donetsk, he wrote a book about it, and now he founded the Fund for the Search of War Criminals - a long interview "The phrase "captivity experience" means nothing.

Stanislav Aseev was a prisoner of "Isolation" in Donetsk, he wrote a book about it, and now he founded the Fund for the Search of War Criminals - a big interview, which, in fact, "Isolation" went through, and he was asked what he felt when he saw Bucha, Izyum. Because he has now created a fund that specifically works with war crimes. And the person who went through the torture chamber says: I don't even know how I feel about it, I couldn't imagine that "Isolation" would scale to the whole country. It's very cool that they tried to convey this to Western ordinary people somehow. Because I have the impression that they still do not understand what is happening here.

So. And again, that's understandable. Because it is very difficult for people to be in a situation where they, that is, we, feel powerless. At best, the Europeans continue to make their small contribution.

From Babel