“I love you, boys!” cries a middle-aged man, raising a plastic cup of vodka. “Let’s have a drink together!” He waves at two heavyset men in crumpled suits on the other side of the street. They mutter something under their breath, and quicken their step.

The man is Mikhail Koptev. He calls himself Luhansk’s only star – the city’s Mick Jagger or Elizabeth Taylor. Today he’s wearing a blue denim shirt underneath a fuchsia cardigan and a sequinned baseball cap, sitting on a bench at the shabby staff entrance of the local cultural centre.

Orchid shows thrilled with 'absurd clothes, fantastical hairstyles, bizarre body art and hardcore erotica'

Even drinking on the street in Luhansk is dangerous. At any moment a military patrol for the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic – the separatist government breaking away from Ukraine – could walk past and demand to see your documents. They say around here that being seen to be drunk is a good way to “end up in the cellar”, which at the very least means losing all your money – sometimes something worse.

It’s here, 20 years ago, that Koptev staged his first provocative fashion shows. As we brazenly drink his vodka, the 45-year-old tells me he was a celebrity long before the arrival of the big new names – the field commanders and the head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Igor Plotnitsky.

Koptev first began working as a model at the local fashion house, Nuance, modelling at army barracks and miners’ headquarters in and around Luhansk. He then became the commercial director of a theatre, before founding the Orchid, where shows thrilled with “absurd clothes, fantastical hairstyles, bizarre body art and hardcore erotica”.

Koptev during his days as a model in eastern Ukraine. Photograph: Mikhail Koptev/The Calvert Journal

Soon the Orchid gained fame outside the city, too. Before the war between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces began in 2014, film crews from television channels in Moscow and Kiev often came to interview Koptev. Vice sent an interviewer to visit him, who declared him to be the world’s finest trash designer.

No one who has seen the Orchid’s erotic show, live or online, can forget it. It features men and women of all ages strutting in odd costumes, displaying parts of themselves that usually stay covered. Outfits include torn negligees made from fur, leather, plastic, old rags, horns, skulls, hub-caps, children’s toys and anything else you might find at a rubbish dump.

Koptev’s creations shun all that is pure, harmonious, polite, peaceful or traditional.

“Oi!” Koptev bellows at another passerby, his big jewelled hands wrapped around his cup of vodka. “Here’s to you! Here’s to you and your cock!” The passerby hurries away.

The new Luhansk

“I have known Misha for 15 years,” says Tatyana Litman, who for the past 35 years has managed Luhansk’s largest cultural centre, where Koptev hosted the first performances of the Orchid. “First he asked me for a place to put his clothes. I was imagining suits and dresses, not heaps of garbage. Then he began to put on shows.”

Litman remembers the first event. “The hall was full. But as the show started, I was sat on a couch with my head in my hands, praying to God that my bosses wouldn’t come in. It was appalling: painted naked bodies; horns, tails and dead cat skins draped over little girls and boys. The audience went wild.” Despite Litman’s reaction, Koptev brought more erotic shows to her Stalinist-era theatre.

It’s hard to imagine a worse place for erotic shows and provocative gay culture than Luhansk today. The town is pock-marked with bullet holes from snipers, and most windows remain shattered. Outside a local cafe, an appeal by the self-declared republic’s Ministry of Emergency Situations asks citizens not to walk on unfamiliar streets, where it’s possible to tread on unexploded landmines.

Those remaining among Luhansk’s drastically reduced population, have a story to tell about how they have survived. They are all similar to each other. They recall gunfire like clockwork; hiding in basements; anxious, sleepless nights; long queues for water broken up by gunfire; food shortages; and not being able to contact relatives outside Luhansk.

Now the town, still trying to recover from the war, is enjoying a poor but relatively peaceful life. The factories have stopped working and electricity, water and mobile reception is still cut off, but a few cafes and restaurants have opened again. Their clients are predominantly armed men in mismatched camouflage gear, even though there’s almost no shooting in Luhansk at the moment.

An image from one of Koptev’s famous nights at the Orchid, held in the city of Luhansk. Photograph: Mikhail Koptev/The Calvert Journal

‘I still want to live’

Koptev’s has lived in his small one-bedroom apartment on Kommunalnaya street for the past 10 years.In comparison with the poverty of the surroundings (the hallway doesn’t have any radiators – neighbours sold them as scrap metal), it is an oasis of opulence: renovated, with air conditioning, a wardrobe with a sliding door, raspberry-coloured curtains, a brown leather sofa and Swarovski crystals coming unstuck from threadbare cushions. On a bedside table lies a book titled Strategies of Brilliant Men.

In the town where there used to be gay discos every week, people can now only find each other on the internet

Over a glass of dessert wine, Koptev talks about how his good life came to an end as soon as the war started. Just as the cultural centre had battled until the bitter end to make people happy, so did he. “It was April 2014. We travelled to a show at a nightclub outside of Luhansk,” says Koptev. “We got there through a shower of bullets. In May the TV channel Ukraina invited us to Kiev. For this trip I couldn’t get any models – they had all fled from Luhansk. I had to use my mother-in-law. I say ‘mother-in-law’: she’s my lover Fairycake’s mum. She knows all about us, so I call her my mother-in-law.”

For the past year Koptev has halted his performances, no longer arranging shows and parties. As soon as the Luhansk People’s Republic came into being, it became obvious that those in control were set to persecute the LGBT community. First there were rumours that homosexuals would be shot on sight. Then a strict anti-gay law was discussed, and they even named the date when it would be passed.

The gay community in the Luhansk region didn’t wait for the repression to start, they left for wherever they could: Rostov and Voronezh, Kiev and Crimea. In the town where LGBT activists once published a magazine and planned to organise a parade, and where there used to be gay discos every week, people can now only find each other on the internet.

‘Everyone thinks I’m a monster, but it’s not true.’ Photograph: Mikhail Koptev/The Calvert Journal

Koptev tells disturbing stories about the ordinary people of Luhansk having to face these armed rebels forces in strange uniforms. “Trust me man, everything is really scary here. To you it might look like I’m sat here on a leather sofa, so audacious and beautiful, wearing silk shirts … But anyone here with any money fucked off a long time ago.

“I keep asking myself: ‘Misha, you’re a girl who will turn 46 in August. How do you see your future? It’s always either been the USSR, the crazy 90s, the war, or the Luhansk People’s Republic’. And I still want to live, and to live in style. But when?”

Suddenly he changes the subject: “Everyone thinks I’m a monster, but it’s not true. People classed as evil by this evil world may in fact be saints. And those considered to be saints often turn out to be evil.”

Luhansk’s devil incarnate, dressed in a teddy-bear jacket, announces: “I think I’ve started talking shit.” He raises his glass again: “Let’s drink to you, mate!”

The original version of this article appeared in Russian on Takie Dela and was first republished on the Calvert Journal, a guide to the new east