Organizations such as the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and La Strada Ukraine have begun to document sexual violence in Ukraine. "It is difficult to fully confirm sexual violence because it's often the type of case where victims don't want to speak publicly, and they're often not in safe areas where it feels safe for them to speak out, or where they have received the services that they need," she said.
But in an interview with Morning Edition, Matilda Bogner, the head of a United Nations team documenting possible human rights abuses in Ukraine, says she has received "dozens" of allegations. NPR has been unable to independently verify individual accounts. Two months into the war, much remains to be investigated and confirmed about the prevalence of sexual assaults in Ukraine. Rape in war zones can be opportunistic or systematic - and it nearly always goes unpunished. Gang rape has even been a grotesque way for disparate troops to bond. Rape has been used as a tactic of genocide - to shape the future of a country through forced impregnation. Victims are primarily women and girls, though men and boys can also suffer sexual violence. Such crimes can be used to humiliate, intimidate and punish. History has shown that rape in wartime has been used to horrifying effect. The evidence is there for the world to see." "It's a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities. "What we've seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit," said U.S. team has seen while documenting possible war crimes in Ukraine Those fears were further crystallized earlier this month following the Russian withdrawal from Bucha, a suburb of the capital Kyiv, where some two dozen women and girls were "systematically raped" by Russian forces, according to Ukraine's ombudswoman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova. The number of reports that have emerged since the start of the war in late February suggests that rape in Ukraine at the hands of Russian soldiers may be widespread. A woman raped by a Russian commander on the day tanks entered the village of Kalyta. The body of a Ukrainian woman found dead - naked and branded with a swastika. A mother of four gang raped by Russian soldiers in Kherson. A woman raped repeatedly by a Russian soldier after her husband was killed outside Kyiv. A woman representing a rape victim leads protesters in Berlin demonstrating in an April 16 march against Russian military aggression in the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Syria.Įditor's note: This report includes descriptions of sexual and physical violence.Īccounts of alleged sexual violence coming out of Ukraine in recent weeks have been grim.