The visitor strolling down the small street of Leopolis could hardly imagine that the bronze statue of Marquis Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, provides access to a café and a hotel that not only praises the memory of the so-called Marquis de Sade but also a hotel dedicated to hosting devotees of sadomasochism.
Very few may know that Von Sacher was born in this same place since when he was born in 1836, the city was not even called Leopolis but Lemberg, and Ukraine did not exist. Lemberg was then a territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The managers of the "Cafe-Hotel Masochism" play with the evocation that emerged from the pages of Von Sacher's most famous novel, Venus in Furs (1870), whose almost autobiographical plot allowed the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing to coin the term "masochism" a few years later.
The black and red decoration of the rooms or the small shop of erotic gadgets, which sells candles whose melted wax can be poured on the skin of the couple, whips, leather handcuffs, or restraints, are a continuous nod to the freest sensuality.
"We are living in uncertain times. We do not know what will happen tomorrow. Ukrainians used to be more reserved, but in recent years they have evolved. Now they are more open. In Leopolis, which is a dating town where soldiers and their girlfriends meet, there is a large BDSM community (the English acronym that identifies these consensual sexual behaviors based on domination and masochism)," explains Daria, 27, the business owner.
The existence of the "Masochist Café" in Leopolis is far from being a mere anecdote or a mere resource to capitalize on Von Sacher's origins. Although there are no specific figures, in Ukraine, Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, and Masochism (which is what BDSM stands for) has become for years a seduction and inspiration element for a sector of the population that consumes underwear like the explicit Anoeses brand - which celebrities like Madonna or Julia Fox have worn -, frequents the multiple clubs specialized in that behavior, or attends Bondage classes like the ones organized in a small room in the Podil neighborhood, in Kiev.
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They also sell bindings of all colors and textures, small gadgets with spiked rotors, sensual calendars, or guides for novices like the one that reads: "Safety guidelines for bondage".
The room is equipped with rings and bars hanging from the ceiling. On one side, you can see a stuffed shark tied to a stick, as if it were an ironic nod to the "educational" content taught in the classroom.
Yulia started in the world of "Shibari" - tying techniques originating from Japan, which ended up associated with BDSM - shortly before Russia promoted the start of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Originally from Kharkiv, she is now the teacher who trains the three women who have come to this session in the intricacies of knots and ropes used in this activity. "You have to tie the knot in the middle of the buttocks," she instructs one of the students.
"Ukraine has always been a conservative society, but the new generations have been educated in a more open sexuality. 70% of our students are women and the rest are men," she comments.
The workshops held in the capital neighborhood of Podil are part of the significant list of centers that teach these practices both in the capital and in other cities like Leopolis, where one of the most recognized "experts" in the country in these techniques resides: Marta Shinnysticks, founder of the "Shibari school" in that locality. "I teach people that shibari is something normal, not a perversion or pornography," defended the Ukrainian architect in statements to a local publication.
The proliferation of "shibari" workshops or BDSM-inspired bars is a reflection of the evolution of sexuality in Ukrainian society during more than a decade of conflict, which has deepened the gap that separates them from the common past they shared with Russia.
Ukrainian relative permissiveness on these matters contrasts with the inflexible tone that Moscow has maintained in this regard for years. The LGBTQ+ concept has acquired in that nation a more than singular connotation and now applies to all practices defined as "non-traditional".
In the territories controlled by Moscow, that community has become one of the main targets of the authorities. Associations defending said collective were classified in 2023 as "extremist" and organizers of activities related to these groups may face up to 10 years in prison.
The crackdown on sexually explicit encounters intensified from 2023 onwards. That year, one of those parties, promoted by a well-known Russian presenter, Anastasia Ivleeva, led to a monumental scandal and a legal process in which the promoters were accused of being "deviants."
Around the same time, the well-known BDSM festival Pesca in the city of Orekhovo-Zuevsky, which had been held for a decade - according to the publication 360 - was abruptly canceled by the police.
Security forces have increased their interventions against these celebrations in recent months. Last August, another court sentenced a BDSM-themed party organizer for "offending the feelings of believers."
Ultra-right movements have also launched an active campaign against any event linked to the most explicit sensuality: from swinger parties to BDSM-themed ones, or supposedly those organized by LGBTQ+ members, equating these behaviors with "Satanism", as recently written by the Russian publication The Insider.
Under the categorical headline "The perverted guerrilla: Russian sex parties go underground," the same media outlet indicated that most of these events have had to leave clubs dedicated to these activities and prefer private meetings. The paranoia has reached such an extreme that some swinger meetings are announced with messages like: "we support family values and oppose the LGBT community."
Far from this approach, the 11 years of armed conflict have allowed members of this sexual orientation in Ukraine greater visibility, supported by the participation of prominent LGBTQ+ group members in the war effort and the demand that their partners have the same rights as those in a heterosexual relationship.
Figures like war veteran Viktor Pylypenko - one of the first soldiers to openly declare themselves gay - have become public figures, determined to break the taboo that still exists in many sectors of the country regarding these individuals.
During the last LGBTQ+ pride events, attendees were able to pay tribute to community members who died in the war with Russia. If in 2024 12 names were shown, this year there were 27, although most with their faces still pixelated, reflecting the long road ahead in the country in this regard.
"We have shown that we exist. We are making progress, even if it's step by step. Our struggle is also a struggle for democracy," commented to this newspaper, Vira Chernygina, a well-known LGBTQ+ activist, at a pride event in Kharkiv, in the north of the country.
The young woman expressed herself in the middle of the main avenue of the northern metropolis, whose trees had been adorned with posters where activists had written slogans like "So gay and so proud" or "Love is love".
Although Ukraine does not recognize same-sex marriage and thereby restricts many of their rights, last June a court recognized a gay couple as a "family," which one of those involved, Zoryan Kis, considered "an important and significant step towards marriage equality in Ukraine."
Public support for LGBTQ+ rights in Ukraine has increased exponentially since 2022. A survey conducted last year by the Institute of Sociology of Kiev revealed that 70% of Ukrainians believe that LGBTQ+ people should have the same rights as everyone else.
The social upheaval caused by the conflict has radically altered the country's approach to a whole host of issues related to sex and intimacy.
The social upheaval caused by the conflict has radically changed the country's approach to a whole host of issues related to sex and intimacy.
The forced absence of soldiers fighting on the front lines has led to the emergence of a host of specialists offering advice on how to maintain intimacy and relationships in these difficult circumstances, as well as a flood of initiatives linking eroticism to the war effort.
At the very beginning of the general invasion in 2022, a couple of young artists, one Ukrainian and one Belarusian, formed a digital platform dedicated to selling sensual photos and sending the proceeds to the local army. The project brought together dozens of "volunteers"—both women and men—and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Last year, one of the country's most famous porn actresses, Josephine Jackson, also sponsored a calendar aimed at raising funds to cover the needs of the growing number of amputees left behind by the conflict.
In the same vein, Ukrainian authorities recently praised the willingness of a significant number of women linked to the controversial OnlyFans platform—an erotic space that some feminist organizations describe as pornography or even covert prostitution—to register as taxpayers and contribute $1.6 million to the national coffers last year, 18% more than in 2023.
"The girls who do this work face a corrupt system in which you have to bribe the agents so they don't arrest you."
This gesture by OnlyFans users came about after the controversy surrounding that community, which was required by the local tax authorities to pay nearly ¤8 million in taxes for the years 2020 to 2022, a figure that gives an idea of the volume of business generated by this activity.
For Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament's finance committee, the attitude of Ukrainian OnlyFans users is "an example to follow."
A large number of Ukrainian women have managed to become stars on OnlyFans—whose owner, Leonid Radvinsky, is an American of Ukrainian origin—in recent years, transforming their popularity into millions in profits.
One of them, Svitlana Dvornikova, is leading a campaign to try to make pornography legal in this country, an effort in which she has found support from several local lawmakers.
"I am a responsible taxpayer. I produce erotic content. In five years, I have paid more than 40 million hryvnia (about 9 million euros) in taxes to the state. Forty million is 100 trucks or 2,000 FPV drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Forty million is hundreds of Russians killed on the front lines," read the petition sent by the model to President Volodymyr Zelensky himself.
Last December, lawmakers supporting Dvornikova's claim introduced a new bill to reform the country's criminal code, which still allows citizens to be punished for simply having nude photos on their phones.
For Josephine Jackson, the attempt to legalize this type of activity comes "late" but "better than never." "Girls who do this work face a corrupt system where you have to bribe the cops so they don't arrest you. If porn were legal, that would stop happening," she explains in a café in Lviv, where she lives.
With more than a hundred films of this type to her name, Josephine points out that in Japan, highly erotic cinema is not stigmatized. "If we want to be European, we have to be more open-minded," she says.