Russian women face violence from Ukraine veterans

WARSAW – Olga drew her index finger abruptly across her neck as she recounted the threats her husband levelled at her after he returned to Russia, wounded from fighting in Ukraine.

“I’m going to cut your head and hands off and beat you up. I’ll burn you in acid,” he threatened her, she said.

Even before her husband went off to fight in Ukraine, he was a violent alcoholic, Olga -- not her real name -- told AFP.

When he returned home seven months later, he was even worse. And now he was a war hero, endowed with a sense of impunity and moral righteousness.

“He became even more radical,” she said. “He said that he was untouchable, that nothing could happen to him.”

Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, rights groups had sounded the alarm over the country’s woeful record on protecting women from domestic violence.

In 2017, lawmakers -- with the blessing of the Orthodox Church -- reduced penalties for Russians convicted of beating family members.

And the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin has in recent years argued that abuse within families should be resolved by families, not law enforcement.

With the war in Ukraine, campaigners say that an already widespread problem could now be getting even worse.

While there are no publicly available figures on the scope of violence perpetrated by veterans, campaigners have identified a slew of survivors.

Olga’s life in her isolated Russian town had long been marked by violence.

Her husband was an alcoholic who regularly raped and beat her, stole money and monitored her every social interaction, she said.

Over and over, he would beg for forgiveness after an altercation, only to become violent again, she said.

So, when he volunteered for the army in Oct. 2022, Olga hoped that proximity to “death and tears” might calm him down and sober him up.

Her hopes were dashed. He returned from the front earlier than expected to recover from a shrapnel wound.

“The next evening, I had a nervous breakdown,” she said.

“He was totally sober, but his eyes were shining. His eyes were ice-cold. He started insulting me,” she recalled.

The police took a statement from Olga and told her husband to leave, but otherwise took no action, she said -- a practice that rights campaigners have denounced for years.

Her husband remained at liberty, and free to spend the equivalent of the 30,000 euros he had received as compensation for being wounded.

The couple eventually divorced, and Olga’s ex-husband returned to Ukraine months later in December 2023 -- but not before assaulting her one final time and robbing her of money.

Ever since her former partner had left for Ukraine again, Olga said she had become preoccupied with the idea of holding him accountable -- “dreams of justice”, as she called it.

What triggered it was a television show she watched on domestic violence. “It felt as if they were speaking directly to me.”

The placing of veterans on a pedestal -part of a push by the Kremlin to shore up support for the devastating conflict -- has endowed them with a feeling that they are above the law, she added.

“Women often tell me that their attacker said he wouldn’t be punished,” Rusova told AFP. “These men flaunt their status.”

But that feeling among veterans also has roots in the failure of the Russian judicial system to tackle domestic violence, she added.

—“— Regional media outlets across Russia regularly publish reports on violent crimes committed by servicemen or former members of the Wagner paramilitary group