Ukraine: Sex, secrecy and security amid all-out battles

KAMIANSKE, Ukraine - When the air raid sirens died down,

.

As the Russian bombs fell, social workers watched HIV treatment dwindle and people in need disappear from the streets.

And when soldiers approached Tetyana, usually carrying weapons, they often asked for discounts that she didn't feel safe refusing.

"The soldiers say, 'Tanya, come for an hour,'" she says, but then they ask for more time.

"I go and entertain them all night for the same money."

Rita, who is raising two young children, in a brothel where she works in Dnipro, in central Ukraine. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

The Russian invasion has affected every city, industry and occupation in Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians and forcing millions from their homes.

Those who sell sex, an especially vulnerable population even in peacetime, are in greater danger of poverty, coercion and health risks, with implications for Ukraine's fight to curb the spread of HIV, say prostitutes and social workers.

Prostitution is illegal but widely tolerated in the Ukraine,

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The industry was widespread, with some 53,000 sex workers, according to the government-run Center for Public Health of Ukraine.

The war has severely reduced workers' incomes and

.

Before the invasion, Ukraine had a high number of HIV-positive people, and this had been a priority for the country's health services.

About a third of people who were eligible for HIV or drug addiction help before the war were no longer receiving it by late summer, according to the health center.

The war has undone years of progress toward safer practices, social workers said.

Iryna Tkachenko, a social worker, tests a woman for HIV at a mobile clinic in Dnipro, Ukraine. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

But several sex workers, interviewed on condition that they not reveal their first names for fear of their families and the police, said they needed the work to survive.

"On the first day of the war, I didn't come here

," Olena said on the side of a road near Kamianske in central Ukraine.

"But the second, yes."

Another woman, Liudmyla, said she now earned about $6 an hour, half what it was before the war.

"Even my regular customers couldn't come to me because they had no money," she said.

Several women workers said the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men in Ukraine had changed business: Soldiers invaded cities and guns became commonplace.

Liudmyla said

, but other women expressed fear.

Olena said she wouldn't get in a car with more than one man.

Tetyana said that some men refuse to pay full price.

"Sometimes a man promises $12, I do my job, but he only pays me $7," he said.

"He tells me: 'Hey, now I earn less', and I answer him: 'Well, don't come to me'".

The war has significantly reduced the number of foreign clients

, said a worker named Rita, who supports two young children.

Vlada, who works in the same brothel and said she helps take care of her mother and her siblings, said she went from having 18 clients a day to about seven.

"Customers used to tip us so well that we forgot to collect our wages," he explains.

"Now $40 is all we have after giving half to the business owner."

Liudmyla, a sex worker, in Kamianske, Ukraine, on August 15, 2022.(Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

Denys, who lives in the capital Kiev and works mainly with gay men, said he

Even afterward, business was slow.

"People are mentally exhausted," she says.

"They're tired of living with these air raid sirens. They have other priorities than being with me."

Now he is

whose meager resources have been deeply affected by the war.

In the city of Dnipro,

, but many more have moved to the city fleeing the fighting, according to Iryna Tkachenko, a Virtus social worker.

"It takes time to build trust," he says.

With supply chains disrupted, social workers have fewer condoms to distribute and fewer clean needles to prevent drug addicts from sharing them.

The spread of HIV is one of the biggest concerns for social workers.

Antiretroviral treatment helps reduce transmission from workers to clients and thus to society at large.

But in the past year, some

, about half because of damage caused by shelling, according to the health center.

Another woman named Tetyana, a social worker who has been helping sex workers in Kamianske for 15 years, hands out what she can and reminds them to take their medicines.

"We put a lot of effort into teaching them to take care of themselves," she says.

. "

And he adds: "I stay here and try to protect them."

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