‘His partner won’t be allowed to ID his body’ A Ukrainian woman is marrying a soldier in case he's killed — because his boyfriend of 15 years can't
In early November, 33-year-old Kyiv resident Leda Kosmachevskaya wrote in a Facebook post that she had accepted a marriage proposal from a Ukrainian soldier and longtime friend of hers who had been in a same-sex relationship for 15 years.
“Yesterday, somebody proposed to me. I accepted. I’m going to be a soldier’s wife. Not because I love him, but because the president of my country still hasn’t responded to society’s request [to legalize same-sex marriage],” Kosmachevskaya wrote.
The post went on to explain that Kosmachevskaya’s friend had joined the Ukrainian army as a volunteer soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion, and that he’ll soon be sent to an especially dangerous part of the front. The soldier thus decided that in case he doesn’t survive, he needed to legally get married to a woman — because he doesn’t have any close relatives and same-sex marriages aren’t legal in Ukraine.
“If something happens, my friend’s partner won’t be allowed to identify the body, go to the hospital, carry out his will, or receive the monetary benefits or bestow them. Because only close relatives or a husband or wife can be considered heirs,” Kosmachevskaya told the Ukrainian news outlet Liga.
Kosmachevskaya said that in the case of her new husband’s death, she plans to take full responsibility for searching for him, identifying him, burying him, and notifying his loved ones. “If it comes down to it, I’m the one who will tell the doctor that my husband wants to be an organ donor. I’m the one who won’t ask the priest to sing, because my husband didn’t want that. I’m the one who will carry out his last wish and who will be the first to meet him when he returns after the victory,” she said.
According to Kosmachevskaya, her friend’s biggest fear is that he’ll disappear and nobody will know what happened to him. She noted that there have been cases where slain soldiers have had to be identified from body parts alone: “Often, it’s only a person’s partner who can do that. But that won’t be considered sufficient [evidence in the case of a same-sex relationship], so I’m going to be the escort, the person who can bring his partner to the morgue.”
Kosmachevskaya said she doesn’t consider herself an activist and has never gone to marches in support of equal rights, but she believes it’s wrong that same-sex couples are disenfranchised in this way during wartime. “It’s unjust, scary, and painful,” she wrote on Facebook.
In Kosmachevskaya’s view, her marriage isn’t an act of support for LGBT+ rights but for the rights of all Ukrainians. “I decided to become a wife because I love my country, and I hope it loves all of its citizens enough to take care of them, regardless of their sex or sexual orientation.”
“If this [looks like] a protest, then it’s a protest against the medieval ideas in the heads of many citizens, against the bonds that were imposed on us by the side that’s trying to destroy us, and it’s also a plea to the authorities to protect all citizens of Ukraine,” Kosmachevskaya told the BBC’s Russian Service.
