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When soldiers from Russia came to her hometown and threatened to rape her daughter, a mother tried to persuade them to take her, said psychologist Vasylisa Levchenko, telling a story of an alleged rape victim. in Ukraine. “One of them agreed,” she said.
The story is one of several documented by officials, aid workers and human rights monitors as Russian troops have withdrawn from areas around the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and other areas of the state since the occupation began. February 24.
““It is impossible to know how many victims there are,” Lyudmyla Denisova, the ombudsman for Ukraine, told Radio Free Europe. This is because “many people have been brutally killed… But, it is another story when our wives, children and their parents are now telling us about the violence that has been exercised against them”.
Denisova added that some of the alleged rape victims claimed that the soldiers told them things like: “We will make sure that you do not want to be with a man anymore, so that you no longer have children”.
“According to preliminary information, there have been many rapes, many“, Said the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova. “All cases will be investigated after our territory is liberated”.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova stands near the site of a mass grave in Bucha. April 8, 2022.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova stands near the site of a mass grave in Bucha. April 8, 2022.
In a report published on April 3, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented the first allegations of rape. A 31-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, from the village of Malaya Rohan, near the eastern city of Kharkiv, said Russian soldiers entered the basement of a local school where women and children were being housed on the night of March 13-14. She said a soldier took her and sent her to a classroom located on the second floor of this school and under the threat of a gun forced her to undress and have oral sex.
“All the while, he held my gun close to my head or placed it in my face“, She is quoted as saying. “He shot twice at the ceiling and said he was giving me more ‘motive’”.
Afterwards, the soldier raped her twice, this woman confessed. He cut her with a knife in the face and neck and then let her go.
The next day, she and her family went to Kharkiv, where she received help.
“I’m lucky to be alive“, She said.
The same day, the British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, wrote on Twitter that rape is a “weapon of war.”
“Although we do not yet know the full extent of its use [përdhunimit] “It’s already clear that it’s part of Russia’s arsenal,” Simmons wrote. “Women raped in front of their children, girls in front of their families, as a deliberate act of submission”.
Russia has not specifically responded to the rape allegations. Russian officials have denied that Russian forces in Ukraine targeted civilians or committed war crimes, but provided little evidence to support those denials.
Shortly after HRW’s initial report, the organization’s researcher in Ukraine, Yulia Gorbunova, told Radio Free Europe that she had also investigated two cases of sexual violence committed by Russian troops in Bucha and Brovari, located on the outskirts of Kiev.
“Gathering information on such cases can be time consuming“, Said Gorbunova on April 8. “In some conflicts, it took months, maybe even years, before the true extent of the crime was known”.
In light of these initial reports, a host of similar stories of sexual violence – and allegations of other atrocities – began to be documented after Russian forces began withdrawing from parts of Ukraine earlier this month.
A woman is seen with a baby on the bus leaving the city of Mariupol. Illustrative photos from the archive.
Andriy Nyebytov, head of the Kiev regional police, told Current Time about an alleged rape case in the village of Bohdanivka.
““The woman went home with her young son and tried to hide.” from Russian soldiers who had killed her husband, Nyebytov said, but two soldiers came to her house in the evening. They were drunk. “And they raped him after threatening to shoot his son”.
“They left, but then came back three more times, and each time they raped this woman,” he said. “In the end, she managed to escape”.
During a press conference on April 7, Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Ukrainian military administration in Krivoy Rich, in the southern Kherson region, accused Russian forces of raping a 78-year-old woman.
Through a Facebook post on April 8, the People’s Advocate, Lyudmyla Denisova, reported on an alleged case of rape of a 14-year-old girl. The girl, she said, was raped by five soldiers in Buca, adding that the victim became pregnant. Denisova also reported that a woman in Bucha was tied to a table and forced to watch Russian soldiers rape her 11-year-old son and a 20-year-old woman in Irpin, near Kiev, who she also said had been raped. by three soldiers at once.
““The level of brutality of this army of terrorists and executors of the Russian Federation knows no bounds.” wrote Denisova, urging the United Nations to investigate the alleged atrocities.
Psychologist Levchenko said the number of rape cases is likely to be much higher than the number of reported cases so far.
““It’s not that women do not want to talk about this issue,” Levchenko said. “They can not. The shock they have suffered hinders the formation of thoughts… Such a person often can not even report exactly what happened”.
She added that new cases are being reported by Ukrainians who have fled to Poland and now these victims are telling stories to aid workers.
The other victims, according to aid workers, do not want to speak out for fear of retaliation as Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its second month.
“It was a woman who said directly that she does not want us to tell anyone her story“, Said Maryna Lehenka, vice-president of the European non-governmental organization against human trafficking, La Strada. “Because she is afraid they will find her and kill her. So they told her”.
In an April 7 interview, psychologist and support worker Kateryna Galyant, who has created a Telegram channel where mental health professionals can connect with people in need, described three alleged gang rapes involving groups. from three to five Russian soldiers in Bucha.
She said the victims told her that the perpetrators had gone to flats or shelters that had signs indicating that women or children were hiding in those buildings.
““Rape is now an instrument of war.”, said Galyant. “A way to show strength, to terrorize people and to break them psychologically and physically.”
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Venediktova told Current Time that her office had set up a working group to gather information on alleged rape cases, so that the information could be sent to the International Criminal Court.
““They have opened a case against the Russian Federation,” she said. “Against the aggressor state. This enables us to use this data not only personally against individual soldiers. If we are able to identify the soldiers, it would be great. “But if we can not identify them, we can still use this information and evidence to confirm the crimes committed by the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine.”./ REL
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