A United Nations report released Friday documented nearly 900 acts of sexual violence by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war, with victims including a 4-year-old girl and an 82-year-old woman.
The Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded 892 victims between February 24, 2022, and July 31 of this year. Men accounted for 725 of those victims, while 151 were women and girls. Sixteen children were among those violently sexually assaulted, according to the findings.
“I am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts … and fear that they are almost certainly continuing amid the unceasing violence we are witnessing every day in Ukraine,” Volker Türk said in a statement. “Sexual violence is a grave feature of the full-scale armed attack against Ukraine. It must stop immediately, irrespective of the perpetrators.”
The documented torture by Russian soldiers, prison staff and national security service officers included rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings of prisoners’ genitals. Women faced electric shocks to their breasts, forced nudity, beatings while nude, and were compelled to watch sexual violence against fellow captives.
Forty-six women, including 10 girls, reported being raped by Russian military personnel. Three of those women had children born of rape.
Viktoria Martsyniuk, 42, a mother from a rural village northwest of Kyiv, told Telegram she was raped by a Russian soldier roughly the same age as her sons. Her neighbor was gang raped by a group of Russian soldiers and then forced to watch as her husband was shot at point blank range, according to the report. Those soldiers never faced justice.
“I feel a little bit better with the therapy, but I would like to improve and if Ukraine has victory I will feel even better,” Martsyniuk said in 2022.
Roughly 75 percent of former prisoners of war and nearly half of all Ukrainian civilians held captive by Russian forces reported being sexually assaulted more than once. Detained civilians were sexually assaulted on a widespread basis throughout internment and during interrogations.
At least 155 men said they were tasered on their genitals with a Soviet-era military field telephone called a “tapik.” One male POW said he was sodomized with a police baton. Another was forcibly penetrated with cell door keys. A Ukrainian civilian was raped with the handle of a shovel.
The report characterized the sexual violence against prisoners of war as “frequent and systematic.” It found that Russia has failed to take any discernible steps to prevent, investigate, or prosecute sexual violence committed by its personnel, and instead has enacted legal provisions providing broad impunity for such crimes.
Russia has committed 89 percent of all sex crimes during its invasion, compared to Ukraine’s 11 percent, according to the UN data.
“Given the high prevalence of cases attributed to its forces,” Türk demanded, “the Russian Federation in particular must take concrete and discernible steps to protect civilians and prisoners of war from all forms of torture, including sexual violence.”
The UN findings emerge amid continued international scrutiny of war crimes allegations as the conflict extends into its third year.