I was raped and beaten by a Russian soldier beside a pile of used condoms… I felt dirty, like I was a disgrace and my boyfriend left me because of it. But this is how I turned my life around

Karina remembers his hand on her back as he pushed her into the darkened attic room, the chained door slamming shut behind them.

It was here that the dark-eyed Russian soldier pointed a gun at her as he pushed her further into the black depths of the small bombed room.

The Russian soldier stood inches away from her, the whiskey still strong on his breath, pointed the gun at her head and threatened to kill her if she didn't undress for him.

Karina followed his orders with trembling hands, knowing that if she fought him, as she so desperately wanted, she would never see her mother's face again.

“And then he raped me,” Karina says, her voice faltering as she thinks back to what happened on March 11, 2022.

'I couldn't think, I just felt numb and couldn't move,' Karina, 22, told MailOnline. “After he was done, he said he would come back and kill me if I told anyone how he raped me.”

An hour earlier, the Russian soldier had shot at her boyfriend – missing him by inches – and accused Karina of secretly contacting Ukrainian forces to tell them how the men with guns were in her village in the Kiev region arrived.

Karina had known her life would change when the bombs started raining on Kiev and the Kremlin tanks rolled into her village – but she could never imagine the horrors the Russian soldiers could wreak.

Her harrowing testimony, first shared with MailOnline, is just one of many reports of systematic sexual violence by Russian soldiers that have emerged following Vladimir Putin's massive invasion of Ukraine.

Karina was twenty when Putin's men arrived in her village with huge tanks on March 8, 2022. Within minutes of arriving, they had terrorized the families living there, invading their homes and stealing from them.

On the second day, they began going door to door, entering families' homes – sometimes taking the families living there hostage in the basements – and setting up sniper positions.

“In the buildings where families still lived, the Russian soldiers went to their compounds and left their military vehicles there, knowing that the Ukrainians would not bomb them if they did,” says Karina, now 22.

Karina, who was working as a medical worker in a hospital when the war broke out, remembers how angry Russian soldiers went from house to house on the third day confiscating their mobile phones and computers after Ukrainian artillery started firing on their positions.

“They felt it was very important that the citizens of this village communicated with the Ukrainian army about their location,” Karina explains.

Karina now recalls in a hushed voice how the Russian soldiers entered her house and shot her boyfriend before taking their phones.

“When the Ukrainian army started firing artillery at the Russians near our village, they blamed me and my friend for giving away their positions,” Karina says. “They shot my friend with a gun and missed him by a few inches to scare him.”

'The Russian soldiers took me out of my house and blamed me. They accused me of passing on data about their location to our Ukrainian army,” says Karina, remembering how a soldier started dragging her across the yard, away from the other soldiers, without knowing it. what would happen to her.

Karina remembers little of what the Russian soldier looked like, only his dark hair and dark eyes, but remembers his nails cutting into her skin as he dragged her to her neighbor's abandoned house.

“I remember seeing that everything was broken in my neighbor's house,” says Karina. “It was like it had been turned upside down.”

He never let go of her wrist as he dragged her up the narrow stairs, passing broken windows and bullets still lodged in the charred walls along the way.

When they reached the top floor, he pushed Karina, who was now trembling with fear, into a small, dark room in the attic and locked the door behind them.

'I remember seeing used condoms all over the floor. I understood that I was not the first to be taken there,” Karina says in a soft voice.

“He pointed the gun at me and kept shouting at me for sending messages to the Ukrainian army about their location,” Karina said. 'He kept pulling the trigger and threatened to kill me. And then he pointed the gun at my head and told me to undress.”

“And then he raped me,” says Karina. “After he finished, he said he would rape me again and that he would kill me if the Ukrainian army's shelling started again.”

“I remember him saying with such hatred, 'I will kill you' when I told anyone – even other Russian soldiers – how he had raped me. He told me to keep quiet and not tell anyone.”

But defiant Karina did just that: she told her closest family and friend what the Russian soldier had done to her. In the days that followed, Karina said she showed no emotion and felt numb.

'But at one point I just broke down and cried for hours. I felt like I was dirty, like I was a shame,” says Karina. “I also felt a lot of fear because the soldier had said that if there was another Ukrainian shelling, he would come back and rape and kill me.”

So when Karina heard that the next Ukrainian shells were hitting the village, she was terrified that he would find her.

'I decided there would be no next time. I knew I had to do something. I could handle anything in this world, but I wouldn't go through that again,” Karina says.

Under the cover of darkness, she and her boyfriend escaped from their home and walked for miles through fields, forests and across train tracks until they reached a neighboring village in the Kiev region.

It was here that she took refuge with a close friend who would help her report the rape to national police and prosecutors when her village was liberated a few weeks later.

Karina says her relationship with her boyfriend didn't last because he resented her for sharing what happened to her with her friends and family.

“It really affected our relationship,” says Karina. 'He knew everything that happened that day and was against me telling people what the Russian soldier did. He wanted me to keep quiet and not talk about it.”

This stigma around sexual violence means that hundreds, if not thousands, of Ukrainian women will remain silent about their harrowing experiences – and it will mean that the true extent of wartime rape will likely remain unknown.

The systematic nature of the rapes committed by Russian soldiers aims to psychologically traumatize generations of people – not only the rape victims, but also their families and children, who are often forced to watch.

But Karina hopes that by sharing her survival story – and the horrors she experienced and endured – more women will come forward and tell what happened to them.

“It's so important not to remain silent, because the soldiers who did this would live normal lives if we didn't say anything, and that's not fair,” Karina says. “They must be prosecuted and brought to justice. They must be held accountable for their actions.”

Karina says that when she reported the crime to prosecutors, they gave her photos of Russian soldiers who had invaded her village.

“I was able to track down the soldier who raped me,” says Karina. “They also had DNA samples that showed he did this to me.”

Defiant Karina was in the courtroom when they gave the soldier a guilty verdict – although he was convicted in absentia, meaning he is unlikely to ever spend time behind bars.

Karina has since tried to move on with her life: she married the love of her life in December and has spent the past 20 months receiving counseling from psychologists from the Andreiev Family Foundation.

'It really helped me. At first I just felt numb and like it wasn't my body, but now I feel normal and I still get help from the psychologists,” says Karina.

The work of these psychologists was so important to Karina's journey to healing that she has decided to help other women who have gone through the same horrific experiences as her.

She now works as a case manager at the Andreiev Family Foundation's Assisto project, helping survivors of sexual violence.

Karina says she decided to share what happened to her and the horrors she endured so that other women know they can survive the trauma and talk about what happened to them.

“I want to share my story to help other survivors of sexual violence know that anyone can survive and live their lives through this. They can stay strong and endure all these terrible circumstances,” says Karina.

If you are a victim of sexual violence in wartime, you can contact us Andreyev Family Foundation's anonymous hotline on 0800 300166 for help and support. If you have fled Ukraine, you can call WhatsApp on +38 067727 2185.