At the age of 12, Maria came to understand her sexual orientation. From that moment on, her world split in two. On one side — herself; on the other — the occupation, a mother with Soviet-era views, and Russian propaganda that repeated from every screen, day after day: “LGBT people are a plague from the West.” 

When Maria found the courage to tell her mother the truth about herself, the reaction was brutal. “My mother said she would have killed me if I were not her daughter,” Maria recalls. After that, the girl fell silent about her feelings. Because there was no safe space for the truth anywhere around her. 

For LGBT people in the occupied territories, danger had a specific name — “Smerch”: a network of Telegram channels that publicly leaked the personal data of “the wrong kind of people.” After being exposed, each of them faced harassment and physical threat. Maria recalls that а girl who looked ‘unfeminine’ could easily be accosted right on the street, while a boy with hair that was too long or an earring could be met with physical violence. After Russia declared the LGBT movement an “extremist organization,” persecution became open and went entirely unpunished. 

Maria understood: she could not exist there. Yet, amid the control and fear, Maria met her girlfriend. She, too, was forced to flee — her data had been leaked to “Smerch” for “discrediting the armed forces of Russia,” and now a grave threat loomed over both of them. They decided to leave together. They learned about Save Ukraine through a video sent by a friend and, ultimately, left for Ukraine. 

“Now I feel morally safe. I can walk hand in hand with my beloved girlfriend and not think that someone is about to hit me or humiliate me,” Maria says today.