Harriet Barber in the Telegraph:
Since Russia’s soldiers first stormed Ukraine, women have been gang-raped, men castrated, children sexually abused, and civilians forced to parade naked in the streets, according to the United Nations.
The Kremlin stands accused of terrorising the Ukrainian population with sexual violence in a systematic and unsparing manner. It is thought that the full-extent of this barbarism will not come to light until years after the war.
The allegations come ahead of a major international conference for preventing sexual violence in conflict, held in London on Monday, during which dozens of survivors from around the world will speak out about their abuse....
Last month, a UN Commission documented what it described as “patterns” of rape and sexual violence inflicted on Ukrainians throughout the war. “Victims range from four to over 80 years old,” it said, detailing a series of appalling accusations in October’s report.
One Russian soldier forced a four-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him in the presence of her parents, according to the report. The 22-year-old mother was raped, her husband sexually violated, and the pair were also forced to have sexual intercourse in the presence of the armed forces.
A 83-year-old woman described how, while her village was occupied by Vladimir Putin’s forces, she was raped by a Russian serviceman in front of her physically disabled husband.
In the summer, a video circulated showing a Russian soldier with blue surgical gloves castrating a Ukrainian prisoner.
The Telegraph could not independently verify these accusations, but these reports have been described as the tip of the iceberg by lawyers, aid workers and sexual assault experts we interviewed. Cases will be underreported for years to come, they say, because it can take years for survivors to speak about such violence....
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said Moscow’s war on Ukraine “is aimed at exterminating the Ukrainian people” and that Russia’s use of sexual violence intends “to spread a state of terror, [and] cause suffering and fear”.
Dr Ingrid Elliott, MBE and one of the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict experts, said that the Russians have two methods of sexual violence – the first of which is staged during an attack on a village.
“People are dragged out to the streets and paraded, men and women,” Dr Elliott said. “There are circumstances where the man would be killed and the woman would face sexual violence afterwards. Sometimes the women are rounded up, and held in basements, where repeated sexual violence is inflicted upon them, for days of even weeks.”
The second pattern of abuse happens in detention centres in occupied territories. While it is hard to document this abuse, people who have fled or been liberated have come forward with information.
“What we see then is sexual torture against men,” Dr Elliott said. This can take the form of genital electrocution, castration or sodomy.
This week, Reuters news agency reported that some Russian commanders have encouraged and ordered sexual violence.
British lawyer Wayne Jordash told Reuters that in around the capital of Kyiv some of the sexual violence reported involved a level of organisation by Russian armed forces that “speaks to planning on a more systematic level”.
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