Hunt is on for Russian rapists as horrifying acts reported
One month into living under Russian occupation in northern Ukraine last March, Marina (not her real name) cycled cautiously through her village. She was five doors from her elderly parents’ blue garden gate when three soldiers ordered her to stop. Grabbing her hair, they dragged Marina into a neighbour’s empty house.
“They forced me to strip naked,” the 47-year-old said, picking at the skin around her fingernails. “I asked them not to touch me, but they said: ‘Your Ukrainian soldiers are killing us’.”
Marina paused, wiped her tears and tried to steady her shaking hands.
“They were shooting their guns inches away from my head so I couldn’t move or run,” she said. “Then they started raping me.”
Weeks after a Ukrainian town is liberated, its civilians are visited by sexual violence prosecutors and asked an indirect question: “Did the Russians behave?” The answers have been harrowing; men’s genitals have been electrocuted, women forced to parade naked and children as young as four orally raped.
The use of rape in war has existed for as long as there has been conflict. It is used to terrorise and degrade a community and is currently being committed in 17 conflicts around the world. Yet although it is deemed a war crime under international law, it mostly remains undisclosed and hidden under layers of stigma and fear.
Now, Ukraine has become the first country to begin trying to prosecute culprits at the same time as its troops battle on.
“We have seen forced nudity, rapes, sexual torture, children forced to watch rapes,” said Iryna Didenko, the lead prosecutor of the new unit, speaking in a heavily-guarded government building lined with sandbags in Kyiv. “Women have been told by Russians: ‘Say hello to your husband for me’ while being raped.”
Cases have been reported in all regions occupied by Russia over the past year; Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson, she said. Officially, 171 victims have agreed to start legal proceedings, though investigators believe the number is “much, much higher”.
The victims are aged four to 82 and include 39 men and 13 children.
This week Ukraine accused two more Russian soldiers of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father. One of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl he “will make her a woman” before she was abused.
The prosecutors – along with investigators and military analysts – spend months on each case, attempting to identify perpetrators from scant information, perhaps just a first name and physical description.
“The soldiers try to hide their information,” said Ms Didenko. “But we ask people to describe their features, their accents, their uniforms.”
Tracking sexual violence perpetrators is challenging enough in peacetime, but when they are a member of an opposing army, and access to records, names and battle plans are limited, it becomes infinitely more difficult.
“The other challenge is the absolute fluidity of the army, you are searching from people all over, and some will have died,” said Ben Brzezicki, a British lawyer working with the UK’S Attorney General’s office, which is supporting the investigations. Under such circumstances, only seven men have been formally identified, and just one case closed, with the perpetrator found guilty in absentia. While suspects are unlikely to be surrendered by Moscow, the prosecution means they will not be able to leave Russia again; extradition treaties require third countries to hand over any person convicted of a war crime. “If the victim gets a verdict from a national judge, they get some satisfaction. The accused won’t be able to leave the territory of Russia. It will be in a database,” she said.
“But at the moment, a lot of victims are not willing to come forward.”
Living amongst blackened buildings and walls pockmarked by bullet holes, many survivors cannot escape memories of their occupation and remain terrified of speaking out.
Marina is one of those averse to reporting her crime to the police. “It feels scary to talk to the police. I can talk with you, it’s easier. But with men, I’m not able to trust them. I don’t see any sense,” she said. Dozens of civilians have also reported sexual abuse within Russian detention centres, set up to torture, humiliate and repress. Anna Mykytenko, a Ukrainian lawyer, described rape as one of the centres’ key “features”. The Daily Telegraph spoke to Vadym, a 56-year-old mechanic, who was detained in Kherson for eight days in November and had his genitals severely beaten.
“There is a pattern. In the first two days the [occupiers] establish places to live, count the people and take phones. On the third day, they rape,” said Ms Didenko. “We have evidence of commanders ordering rape.”
“The challenge is collecting the evidence which establishes the links between the crimes on the ground and their involvement,” said Wayne Jordash KC, a British lawyer supporting the prosecutor general.
Back in her village, Marina looks frayed as the bitter evening draws in. Roses and candles lay on the ground for families wiped out in the fighting.
She said: “I am weak now. Time is not healing me. “But facts are facts. Let England know what happened here.”
‘We have seen forced nudity, rapes, sexual torture and children forced to watch rapes’