On going west - Masha Gessen in The New Yorker:

‘For much of the past year, Alex Stone, his fiancée Halyna Rusanova, and Halyna’s mother, Nataliya, have shared a one-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor of a Soviet-era apartment building in eastern Saltivka, a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv. The family spent most nights sleeping in the apartment’s tiny entryway, away from the windows. In between Russian shelling attacks and air raids, they would venture out to buy what food they could afford on occasional aid from a charity organization. They are typical residents of wartime Kharkiv, except in one respect: when the full-scale invasion began, they were living in Moscow.’

(…)

‘A lot of people who opposed the war had already left Russia. Alex was stuck. He had spent years saving money for top surgery, but the price kept rising. By the time Alex was in his mid-thirties, he was resigned to living with breasts. He and Halyna decided to spend the money differently: Alex would legally change his name, and then they would travel to a country where foreigners of the same sex could get married. Alex, who was born Ekaterina Leonova, had chosen “Alex” as a gender-neutral name and “Stone” as a nod to “stone butch,” which had also been Alex’s identity. Two weeks before the start of the war, Alex filed his name-change request and surrendered his identity documents.’

(…)

‘Alex and Halyna met online during the pandemic. Alex is heavy. He speaks softly but with a sense of gravity. Halyna is skinny and tall and wears a long blond braid. She speaks quickly, in a high pitch. Both are struck by their good luck at having found each other.
On the first day of the war, Alex went to a protest. Halyna wanted to go, too, but Alex convinced her that, with a Ukrainian passport, she’d be risking her life. Alex himself got detained for a few hours. They knew they wanted to leave the country, but Alex had surrendered his documents for the name change. They spent the remainder of their savings on expediting the process so that, by the end of the third week of March, Alex had a passport—a Russian passport.’

(…)

‘After about twenty minutes, they passed a sign that read “State border of Ukraine,” or what remained of it. On the other side of the road, a line of cars waiting to get into Russia was at a standstill. Eventually, a lone driver going in the direction of Ukraine offered them a ride. They ended up in Vovchansk, a town that had been under Russian occupation since the first day of the war. The keeper of a roadside hotel told them they could stay and pay her in buckwheat and canned goods, which she said they would be able to get in humanitarian-aid packages distributed by the Russians. The fact that buckwheat, a staple, had become a tradable commodity suggested that there was essentially no food in Vovchansk. Indeed, what food there was in the stores was prohibitively expensive. Occasionally, Russian cars arrived with humanitarian aid, but it was only for the elderly and the town’s residents.’

(…)

‘The officer loaded the family and their belongings into a car, apparently intending to drive them to Kharkiv. The shelling and bombing seemed to get intense for him, though, and he stopped at the next checkpoint, where he directed the soldiers to make sure the trio got to Kharkiv. The next car to pass the checkpoint got three extra passengers. An hour later, they were in Kharkiv. A friend told them that they could stay in his apartment: he was with his parents in western Ukraine. They gorged on cheap bread. They barely noticed that Kharkiv, which had been under heavy fire since the first day of the war, was an empty shell of a city.’

(…)

‘Alex and Halyna have concluded that they need to leave Ukraine. A friend is helping them raise money for the journey. They can take the train to Odesa, avoiding checkpoints, and then a bus to Moldova. They plan to get married online, in Utah, and then, perhaps, to make their way to a country that recognizes same-sex marriage and doesn’t require visas for Russian citizens. Costa Rica is such a country. It’s far away, and expensive to travel to, but there are only three hundred Russians there, according to something Alex has read. (In fact, there seem to be several thousand.)
Nataliya wants to stay in Ukraine. She’s spent enough time in other people’s countries, she said. After Alex and Halyna leave, she plans to go to Alex’s house, in Slovyansk, and learn how to grow her own vegetables.’

Read the article here.

Pay the hotel bill in buckwheat and canned goods.

When I was in September in Ukraine, I was told that it is not the best place for lhgbtq-people either, but probably better than Russia.

My guide in Odessa said that the neighbors want to believe that his boyfriend is his son.

And Costa Roca as the latest center of Russian diaspora.

It's’ time to visit Costa Rica.