Sexual violence against civilians and POW’s in Ukraine widespread and ‘abhorrent’

That’s according to a new UN human rights office (OHCHR) report which details violations including gang rape, rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals – together with other degrading acts of a sexual nature.

Violations were recorded on both sides of the frontline, but the pattern is very different “in scope and scale,” stressed Danielle Bell, the head of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, briefing journalists on Friday. 

Russian authorities – including members of the armed forces, prison service and national security service – were responsible for 89 per cent of the documented cases.

Sexual violence was particularly widespread among detainees held by Russian authorities, with almost three-quarters of former prisoners of war and nearly half of all civilians detained experiencing sexual violence on more than one occasion, Ms. Bell reported.

The remaining 11 per cent of documented cases were attributed to Ukrainian authorities, and almost half of these exclusively comprised threats. 

Ms. Bell also stressed that Ukraine provides the UN mission with “unfettered access” to the prisoner-of-war camps and to other detention facilities. 

Most victims are men

Most of the victims of sexual violence were men, particularly in places of detention, and those interviewed for the report recounted deeply distressing experiences. 

Many of the Ukrainian POWs and retained medical personnel suffering violations by Russian forces said they were tasered in the genitals using a Soviet-era military field telephone known as a “tapik”, with 155 (27 per cent) having endured this form at least once. 

One Ukrainian POW described being raped with a baton, another being forcibly penetrated with cell door keys. One Ukrainian civilian said he had been raped with a shovel handle.

Women and children

Nonetheless, women and children were also affected, primarily in occupied territory of Ukraine.

The youngest documented rape survivor was a four-year-old-girl and the oldest an 82-year-old woman, with both cases perpetrated by Russian authorities.

One of the women interviewed recounted that a Russian soldier moved into her home in Zaporizhzhia and raped her several times a week for a month, promising that her detained husband would be treated better in exchange.

Another woman said a Russian soldier forced his way into her home in Kherson and raped her every night. He also repeatedly threatened her with gang rape.

In another case, a woman described how two Russian soldiers broke into a family home in the Kyiv region in 2022. After shooting and killing her husband, they gang raped her and threatened to shoot her in front of her four-year-old son if she resisted.

‘Almost certainly’ ongoing

“I am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts documented in our report, and fear that they are almost certainly continuing amid the unceasing violence we are witnessing every day in Ukraine,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

“It must stop immediately, irrespective of the perpetrators,” he stressed. 

“Given the high prevalence of cases attributed to its forces, however, the Russian Federation in particular must take concrete and discernible steps to protect civilians and prisoners of war from all forms of torture, including sexual violence,” he said.