Esenia, Anastasia and their daughter are hoping to flee Ukraine as soon as possible. You can donate to their cause through the FundRazr page here.
Since they moved to Ukraine, Esenia says life is “only a little bit better.” Neither Anastasia or Esenia can work, and rely on online freelancing work to make ends meet. Esenia no longer teaches a class full of pupils – she now has to teach her daughter. Shops try to charge the couple double the price they charge Ukranians for the same goods. They cannot access healthcare. They have also been attacked.
“We can’t go back to Russia. In our situation, we’d lose our child, because we are a gay couple. It’s gay propaganda to have a relationship. She’s 11-years-old. And we’re family. And we lose a child just because we have our family. So we really can’t stay here because we don’t have anything, and they don’t care. We can live here, but we don’t have any rights here. We’re a problem that should be solved. That’s why we just sit quietly and stay at home.”
In a bid to cement their status, some have married in order to secure residency, with others falsifying papers. But Esenia and her family do not have that choice.
“It’s a smart decision to not show that you’re a lesbian. But sometimes you just get tired, and tired of lying. Sometimes you think, “maybe we should break up, just to save everyone,” – but that’s cowardice, it’s a lazy decision,” she said.
“We have stopped thinking about our future, we’re just thinking about our child. We’re really hoping to live somewhere where we won’t be hated. We’re really aiming for that, and it’s harder than it was before. I don’t know really how we can live better here.”
In the hope that the family can move to safety at some point in the future, they are asking for those with any disposable money to donate to their FundRazr page.
But until the family make the extra cash that they need to flee, they have one message for LGBT Russians: do not come to Ukraine.“People will make the same mistake we did. They will go somewhere they can go easily. They wonder, why didn’t you go elsewhere? The reason is that it’s impossible,” she said.
Esenia, Anastasia and their daughter are hoping to flee Ukraine as soon as possible. You can donate to their cause through the FundRazr page here.