The video, shot in Kiev, shows Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk holding hands in the Ukrainian capital, in order to gauge the response from the public. The public reaction was muted; most paid little attention, while some were amused by the novelty of a male couple.

But toward the end of the clip, one of them sits on the other’s lap on a bench on Khreschatyk, the central street in Kyiv where protesters camped out during the Euromaidan unrest in 2013-14. A group of ten to fifteen young men, neo-nazis, approached the couple and began verbally taunting them until a passing police cruiser was out of sight. Watch what happened below.

Despite the violent attack, the couple say in the video that they see the overall lack of reaction as a “step forward”.

In the original video, which was inspired by the supreme court’s decision in late June to legalise gay marriage in the US, two men from the prank-loving YouTube channel ChebuRussia TV walked around downtown Moscow holding hands.

“Other people just don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect them personally”.

At one point in the video, the guys’ affection prompts a group of 15-20 aggressive young men to come over and attack.

“It looks like they’re f**king mistaking this place for America”.

“Ukraine has definitely made some progress, and the fact that there isn’t state homophobia in Ukraine is probably the reason why ordinary people weren’t aggressive towards us”, Kis said. “But if Ukraine wants to move on and get closer to Europe, the government must act to protect us from people like those attackers,” he told the Guardian.