PHOTOS: Meet the gay men surviving in war-torn Ukraine

These men were resilient and determined to enjoy the freedoms that living in an open society allows, despite Putin's War. © Provided by Gaycities

Elska is a project centered on traveling around the world, meeting a selection of everyday local guys, and introducing their city and their lives to readers through honest photography and personal stories. Below, photographer Liam Campbell shares exclusively with GayCities a selection of photos and behind-the-scenes commentary about some of the beautiful men of Ukraine.

These men, clearly traumatized, were still resilient and determined to enjoy the freedoms that living in an open society allows – Russia, under Putin of course, is a dire threat not just to the independence of the country and its fledgling democracy but also to the limited freedoms the LGBTQ+ community has carved out for itself in the war-torn nation.

Although much of the world didn’t really notice the war in Ukraine until February 2022 when Russia greatly escalated its campaign, the war had been ongoing since 2014 following Russia’s seizure of Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine. The ‘Elska Lviv’ issue was actually made in two parts: A little over half of the men featured were met and photographed during the earlier phase of the war, and the rest came to our project in late 2022.

One of the first men I met in Ukraine was Sasha. We started our photoshoot in the streets of Lviv’s gorgeous old centre, but my strongest memory of the afternoon was when we wandered through a small alleyway and stumbled across a massive bit of graffiti that read ‘ПТН ПНХ'. This is a shortened version of the phrase ‘Путин, пошёл на хуй’, which translates to roughly, ‘Putin, go f*ck yourself’. Sasha instinctively stood next to it to pose, and I shot several frames of him there. Some of these showed him sticking up a middle finger too, and one of these pics graces the back cover of the ‘Elska Lviv’ issue

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ПТН ПНХ!