Saturday underground invasion gay bar

Get your copy here. Some people woke to rumbling — maybe thunder, maybe fireworks, or so they thought. For most, it was like something bottomless, heavy and silent. They pushed the truth away until it became undeniable. And now: war. Suddenly, the word felt different.

This was their war.

TAIPEI TECHNO

Something heavy, foreign, spoken with trepidation — its meaning foggy and unreachable, like invisible forces attacking without warning, motives and reasons hidden. His first-ever date at a gay club — and, as it would turn out, his last date with that guy. They said goodnight and went their separate ways. The next morning, he woke to dozens of missed calls, mostly from his best friend.

Everyone knows I love my sleep. He got up, went to the kitchen and found his mum making breakfast, about to take the dogs out. She nodded. She went to the window and started to cry. That was the moment that got to him. As he stood in line at the checkout, holding two bottles, people around him were buying essentials: salt, matches, candles; needs unchanged since the second world war.

The feeling of fulfilling a mission, of being useful, needed. Seconds without sight, without sound. Then I remember screaming. Shock, pain. The guys dragged me to the shelter. The Russian invasion drove young people from every corner of Ukraine, from every kind of life, to choose their part in the struggle. Before the war, Vlad owned a cafe in Kyiv.

Even a year into the full-scale invasion, his cafe kept running until Vlad, seeking new ways to help, decided to join the service. Many military personnel visited his cafe. Vlad took advantage of this, asking if their unit needed a medic. He cared for bedridden patients, learning hard-won lessons hands-on: Natasha, with brain cancer; Oleg, with stomach cancer.