Isabel Sawkins and Grace Rollison

Putin’s army is using rape as a weapon of war

(Getty images)

In Ukraine, no one is safe from the onslaught of the Russian army. Men, women and children are all targets. And there is mounting evidence that Russian troops have been raping civilians since the onset of war last month, with sexual violence serving as part of the Russian army’s attempts to subjugate the Ukrainian population. It is a deliberate strategy. Nothing is off-limits for the Russian army.

Gruesome images were recently shared online by Mariana Betsa, ambassador of Ukraine to Estonia, to document what is happening in Ukraine. She shared an image of the body of a three-year-old girl. Betsa said the girl had been raped. Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko has also accused Russian soldiers of such crimes, claiming that: ‘Russian soldiers loot, rape and kill. Ten year old girls with vaginal and rectal tears. Women with swastika-shaped burns. Russia. Russian men did this. And Russian mothers raised them. A nation of immoral criminals,’ she said.

Even when the fighting does finish and these women are able to get the help they need, they are unlikely to find justice

Ukrainian women have shared their horrific tales with journalists and charities. Human Rights Watch has also been collecting stories from victims of sexual violence, including a woman who told them that ‘a Russian soldier had repeatedly raped her in a school in the Kharkiv region where she and her family had been sheltering on 13 March. She said that he beat her and cut her face, neck, and hair with a knife.’ 

Kateryna Cherepakha, president of La Strada Ukraine, a charity which supports sexual assault survivors, said they have received several calls from women and girls who have been attacked. ‘In most cases,’ she said, ‘it’s been impossible to help them physically. We haven’t been able to reach them because of the fighting.

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