An interview with Viktor Pylypenko, Ukrainian army soldier and head of the country’s LGBT Military Equal Rights Association. Interviewer: Vitalii Mazurenko

VITALII MAZURENKO: What is your opinion on tolerance towards the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine?

VIKTOR PYLYPENKO: Ukrainian society has been changing in front of our eyes. Maybe some time ago it looked like we were behind other countries with regards to this issue. But now things are different. When it comes to the country’s social transformation, equal rights education and human rights, including those of the LGBTQ+ community, we are moving forward. We can see this, for example, in the number of participants at the Kyiv Pride Parades. While in 2015 its participants (very few in number) were attacked by right-wing radicals, these events now not only attract larger numbers of participants but are also organised in smaller towns and localities.

“Not only is Manizha not Russian, but she’s not even a person, she’s… salt!” declared the professor, as he revealed the result of an experiment conducted on the pop star’s skeleton. The research was ordered following widespread public discussion about who exactly Russia was sending to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam.

The issue of granting parental rights to same-sex partners has become the most important fight for equality in modern day Latvia. As parliament prepares to decide on key amendments to the country’s constitution, Latvians are struggling to understand that their freedom should not infringe on the freedom of others.

No one embodies the individual and collective fight for one's liberties and freedom in modern-day Latvia as much as Evita Goša. When her fiancée found out she was not entitled to a ten-day paid leave usually granted to fathers of new-borns, she petitioned the Constitutional Court of Latvia which agreed to hear the case.