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Russian soldiers raped a 22-year-old Ukrainian mother, sexually assaulted her husband and forced the couple to have sex in front of them before raping their four-year-old daughter, a gruesome and damning UN report has revealed.
The heartbreaking report describes how Russian troops, while occupying a village in the Chernihiv region, also raped an 83-year-old woman in her home in front of her physically disabled husband.
A 56-year-old woman, from a village in the Kiev region, also revealed in horrific testimony how three Russian soldiers broke into her home, with two of them grouping her while the third watched.
These testimonies—and there are many more in the report—show how Russian soldiers have used rape as a weapon of war in the eight months since the barbarian invasion began.
The report also describes how Russian soldiers carried out summary executions – executions without trial or due process – in Kiev, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and the Summy regions, with the youngest victim being a 14-year-old boy.
In the report, members of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into Ukraine said they had also documented patterns of torture, ill-treatment and illegal detention in areas occupied by Russian armed forces — all of which amount to war crimes.
The report describes how Russian soldiers raped women and girls in their homes or took them and raped them in vacant homes, leading some to commit suicide.
The heartbreaking report details how Russian troops, while occupying a village in the Chernihiv region, also raped an 83-year-old woman in her home in front of her physically challenged husband (Image of a woman arranging flowers outside a house where a couple were killed in Kiev)
In many cases, the Russian soldiers shot – or threatened to kill – the women’s husbands as soon as they tried to defend their wives and avoid being raped.
In March this year, two Russian soldiers raided the home of a young family in the Kiev region and raped a 22-year-old woman several times before sexually assaulting her husband.
The two soldiers then forced the traumatized couple to have sex in front of them.
One of the soldiers then forced the couple’s four-year-old daughter to have oral sex with him.
“In most cases, these rapes also amount to torture and cruel or inhumane treatment of the victims and relatives who were forced to watch,” the report said.
In another village in the Kiev region, a Russian soldier broke into a house and tried to drag a 50-year-old woman out of the house. Her husband tried desperately to defend his wife, but the Russian soldier shot him dead.
The soldier took the woman to a nearby empty house where he raped her until a military unit of the Russian armed forces arrived and took him, the report says.
Her husband died of his injuries two days later because he could not be transported to the hospital.
In the Chernihiv region, an 83-year-old woman told investigators how she had been raped by occupied Russian troops in her home where her physically disabled husband was also present.
In the Kiev region, a 56-year-old woman told investigators how three Russian soldiers broke into her home. Two of them raped her while the third watched.
Before leaving the house, the soldiers stole food and money from her.
Weeks later, the woman learned that her husband had been tortured and executed by Russian soldiers.
Russian troops have been accused of massacring civilians in the areas they occupy, and the UN says it has now verified more than 100 rapes
Rape has traditionally been used as a weapon of war – in Bosnia in 1992, Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2003 to name just a few.
It is also known that in the past, Russian soldiers used rape as a weapon of war. Soldiers of the Soviet Red Army raped an estimated two million German women after the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich at the end of World War II.
The true extent of wartime rape – and now in Ukraine – will remain unknown as many women remain silent about their experiences for fear of being stigmatized.
A Ukrainian victim, who had been raped by Russian troops, told the Commission: “This experience is very embarrassing for me and I am extremely scared and intimidated”.
The report says, “Stigma that continues to surround sexual violence requires patience until victims feel safe and cared for enough to talk about what happened.”
A psychologist who has worked with Ukrainian survivors said, “All the victims I work with blame themselves for being spotted and raped by perpetrators.”
Systematic mass rape campaigns use forced conception as a tool to ethnically cleanse a nation and psychologically traumatize generations of people.
The children born as a result of this wartime rape are often stigmatized themselves for becoming a “living memory of the conflict,” academics say.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February when Putin ordered what would be a days-long “special military operation” to overthrow the government.
But he’s now stuck in an eight-month war that looks set to go on for months at the very least, and he’s suffering huge losses.
Ukrainian resistance has proved fiercer than almost all observers expected, fueled by atrocities committed by Russian forces in occupied territories.
In April, after Putin’s men withdrew from areas around the capital Kiev, mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of civilians were uncovered.
Survivors of the occupation told how Russian soldiers hunted anyone suspected of collaborating with the government or military to interrogate and torture – some were eventually killed.
Others told how soldiers came to their homes, beat or raped them, stole them and then fled as Ukrainian troops advanced.
Kiev argues that Moscow is waging a genocidal war aimed at erasing their national identity by killing innocent people, deporting people to Russia and systematic rape.
Putin denies that his armed forces are deliberately targeting civilians.