The issue of conflict related sexual violence has been raised from early days. For example, on March 4, 2022, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, spoke of numerous cases of sexual violence in the week of Putin’s war, during an event organized by the Chatham House think-tank.
On March 17, 2022, four Ukrainian MPs visiting the U.K. Parliament, Lesia Vasylenko, Alona Shkrum, Maria Mezentseva, and Olena Khomenko, reported that Putin has been deliberately targeting women and children after Ukraine did not surrender. They spoke of this targeting to have included rape and sexual violence.
As they told journalists in Westminster, “We have reports of women gang-raped, these women are usually the ones who are unable to get out. We are talking about senior citizens. Most of these women have either been executed after the crime of rape or they have taken their own lives.”
In April 2022, the Ukrainian Ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova was said to have received 400 reports of rape committed by Russian soldiers. The reports were mostly coming from the temporary occupied territories or recently liberated areas
In June 2022, media reported on the first trial of a Russian charged with rape and sexual violence. The soldier stood accused of raping a Ukrainian woman during Russia’s invasion
Reportedly, “The suspect, Mikhail Romanov, [stood] accused of breaking into a house in March in a village in the Brovarsky region outside Kyiv, murdering a man and then repeatedly raping his wife while threatening her and her child.”
According to Patten, the United Nations managed to verify more than a hundred cases of rape or sexual assault in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. The data obtained to date suggests that the age of the victims of sexual violence ranges from four to 82 years old. The victims are mostly women and girls, but also men and boys – even though the numbers will be too low compared to reality.
Rape is part of Russia’s “military strategy” and a “deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims.” When women are held for days and raped, when you start to rape little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations, when you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.
