Ukrainian women are suffering from physical and sexual violence by the Russian armed forces across entire Ukraine.
The office of the Ukraine Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights has been receiving complaints submitted by Ukrainians about sexual crimes committed by the Russian military personnel since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Ukraine Melinda Simmons tweeted about the emerging reports of rape by the Russian armed forces:
According to Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Heraschenko speaking to Radio Liberty, Ukraine intercepts numerous conversations of Russian soldiers boasting of having raped Ukrainian women.
According to another interception by the Security Service of Ukraine, Russian soldier tells his relatives that his fellow soldiers raped an adult women and a 16-year-old girl.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova said officials are investigating the attack perpetrated by a drunken Russian soldier in Brovary, an eastern suburb of the capital. She said: “This evil man broke into a private house and shot the owner. After that, the drunken occupier and his colleague repeatedly raped the wife of the killed civilian, threatening her with violence and weapons.”
“He even threatened her young child, who was with the victim.”
She added that Ukraine has informed Russia that the man is wanted “on suspicion of violating the laws and customs of war” after a warrant for his arrest was issued.
Ms Venediktova continued: “We will find every villain and make him answer for all the severity of the law.”
According to State Emergency Service of Ukraine, the district of Bucha has been the most dangerous area where Russian forces engaged in raping, looting and killing civilians.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba in a discussion held by Chatham House on 4 March also accused the Russian soldiers of rape in Ukrainian cities arguing for investigation and prosecution of the crimes committed by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine.
Addressing the European Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also referred to rape committed by the Russian soldiers.
In The Times interview, Ukrainian woman gang-raped by drunk Russian soldiers whilst her four-year-old son hid crying in a boiler room just moments after they shot dead her husband tell her heart-breaking story.
Natalya, 33, whose name has been changed, told how a Russian commander and another soldier came to the family's home in a small village near Kyiv after dark on March 9 and shot dead her husband Andrey, 33, in the front yard. Moments later, Natalya heard footsteps in the house, which Andrey had built years earlier, and saw the Russian commander - who told her his name was Mikhail Romanov - and a younger soldier dressed in black.
Natalya shouted to her four-year-old son Oleksii, whose name has also been changed, to stay hidden in the boiler room, where the family had been sheltering from the shelling in their home in Shevchenkove, a village just outside Kyiv. The mother told The Times the younger soldier pointed a gun to her head and spat:
"You'd better shut up or I'll get your child and show him his mother's brains spread around the house."
Natalya was then raped over several hours by the two soldiers whilst a gun was pointed to her head, and she could hear her son sobbing in the boiler room.
"[The younger soldier] told me to take my clothes off. Then they both raped me, one after the other,'" Natalya told the newspaper.
"They didn't care that my son was in the boiler room crying."
'They told me to go shut him up and come back. All the time they held the gun to my head and taunted me, saying: "How do you think she sucks it? Shall we kill her or keep her alive?"'
After hours of the Russian soldiers taking it in turns to rape Natalya, the men left but within 20 minutes they returned and raped her again. The soldiers came back to the family's home for a third time to rape Natalya, but this time they were so intoxicated that they were stumbling.
They eventually fell asleep, giving Natalya time to run to her son, who was huddled inside the dark boiler room, and flee their home.
'While I was opening the gate my son was standing next to his father's body but it was dark and he did not understand it was his father,' Natalya recalled. 'He said: "Will we get shot the same as this man here?"'
Natalya, who has since fled to the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil with her son, said the four-year-old still does not know his father has died, and she can't bare to tell him just yet. The little boy still asks to buy doughnuts for his father when they go to the shops.
Natalya's horrific ordeal is being investigated by Ukraine's prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova, the country's first official investigation into alleged rape committed by Russian soldiers.
Her case is the latest in a string of rape claims levied against Kremlin troops since the invasion began.
Natalya recalled how her family had hung a white sheet from their gate in Shevchenkove on March 8 after Russian troops entered their village to show that they meant no harm and there were people there.
But a day later, on March 9, the couple had heard gunshots outside their house. The family, who walked outside with their hands raised, saw a group of Russian soldiers, one of whom had his rifle pointed at the family's dog lying dead.
The commander, identified as Romanov by Natalya from social media posts, was among the group and became aggressive when he saw a camouflage jacket in the family's car. Romanov then proceeded to snatch the keys of the car and drunkenly drove the car into a fallen tree before storming off.
But hours later at night, the family heard a loud noise by their gate and Andrey went outside their home to check what happened. Natalya recalled hearing a single shot and the sound of the gate opening before footsteps sounded in the house. Romanov had come back with the younger soldier, who said he had shot her husband because he was a 'Nazi' before they both repeatedly raped her for hours.
After eventually manage to flee their family home, Natalya said her sister-in-law encouraged her to report the gang-rape to police.
The grieving widow, who said she and her husband would have been celebrating their wedding anniversary next month, said her family are unable to recover her husband's body or bury him because their village remains occupied by Russian troops.
She said that she does not know if she will ever return to her village because the 'memories are hard', adding that she could never bring herself to sell their home because her husband built the house for them.
On 21 March, a woman who escaped from the decimated Ukrainian town of Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv while it was still occupied accused Russian soldiers of raping women and shooting innocent civilians.
Anastasia Taran, a 30-year-old from Enerhodar who was working as a waitress in Irpin prior to the Russian invasion, claimed that conditions in the Russian-occupied town are like 'hell' and alleged the invaders engaged in horrific treatment of locals.
'Irpin is Hell. There are plenty of Russian soldiers out there who just shoot people who enter private homes and, at best, just kick people out of their homes,' Anastasia told Ukrainian outlet Euromaidan Press.
"They rape women and the dead are just being dumped."
On 30 March, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine informed of the harrowing case of rape in Mariupol partially occupied by the Russian invaders:
Svetlana Zorina, 27, who lives with her grandmother in Kherson captured by the Russian army, spoke with CNN on 4 March about the dire situation and accused the invading forces of sexually attacking women:
CEO of Anti-Corruption Action Center Daria Kaleniuk on 9 March reported two cases of rape on Twitter:
Nash Kyiv newspaper interviewed Bucha resident Fedir: “I know about the cases of rape. They had happened early on, even before Bucha was fully occupied. They also take hostage civilians. Sister of my friend sat for 5 days in a basement. It is only by sheer miracle that she managed to make it out.”
Besides, Head of Mykolaiv regional state administration Vitaly Kim mentioned rape committed by Russian troops in a coversation with Aleksey Navalniy, representative of the Russian opposition.
More than 10 million Ukrainians, mostly women with their children, fled their homes. According to UN General Secretary António Guterres, they become targets of human traffickers. Sex trade is one of the main motives of organized crime against women fleeing the war.
Comments