"I thought I would be killed": Sexual violence committed by Russians in Kharkiv Oblast

For three days, the occupiers were drinking, robbing, looking for women on the street where Olena (name changed) lives. Once at one in the morning, a drunk Russian soldier broke into her house. He said that other soldiers were waiting outside.

"Six men. I thought he would call [them] and they would kill me," Olena recalls that night.

The soldier asked where the young women lived on the street. When her answers did not satisfy him, he started hitting Olena in the face. Then he lay on top of her and tried to rape her.

"... He put me between his legs and said: 'Good'. I wanted to ask: 'Would you do that to your mother?' But I decided to say nothing," the woman recalls.

He wanted to force her to have oral sex. Ms. Olena tried to win time — she said she was thirsty. And then other soldiers called him. In the end, the soldier threatened to leave a grenade on the door.

The occupiers took the woman's phones, headphones, flashlight and glasses. Olena was afraid to leave the house, and only at 3:20 a.m. she climbed out through the window. In the morning she reported the crime to the Russian commandant's office.

Three months after the experience she is still afraid to stay alone at night.

"For three months I was shaking. My daughter says: 'Mom, how did you endure all this?' Whether I did or not, but in my soul..." the woman struggles for words.

Silent crimes

The Rome Statute, which governs the International Criminal Court, defines rape and "any other form of sexual violence" as a war crime. As human rights activist Larysa Denysenko explains, it does not matter how the soldier committed sexual violence — it can still be interpreted as a violation of international humanitarian law.

"It happens in the occupied territory, it happens by the enemy army. It doesn't matter if it is a proven fact of rape, because sexual violence as a war crime has a much broader interpretation, because during the war a person feels much more vulnerable to enemy representatives with weapons than under any other conditions. This crime remains sexual violence — it does not matter whether it is rape or forcing to get naked in front of your family, your child, strange men," explains Denysenko.

Ukrainian law enforcement is investigating sexual violence under Article 438 of the Criminal Code as a violation of the laws and customs of war. In Kharkiv Oblast, investigators are probing five cases of sexual violence committed by Russian servicemen, Oleksiy Tsvetkov, deputy head of the department of the Main Investigation Department of the National Police, told hromadske. He worked for two weeks in the de-occupied territories. One of the cases is being investigated by the Security Service. Local residents told the police about more crimes, but investigators have not yet found all the victims.

"I have worked a lot in the police. I have seen various crimes. But it was shocking that a soldier with a weapon could commit such crimes against children or pregnant women (there was such a fact, but not in Kharkiv Oblast). It seems to me that a healthy person would not even think of committing such acts against defenseless children, women and old ladies," Tsvetkov comments.

The true scale of sexual violence in Kharkiv Oblast may be much larger — not all victims report to law enforcement agencies. Sexual violence remains a taboo topic that victims want to forget about as soon as possible.

"The difficulty always lies in the fact that these are silent crimes," explains Larysa Denysenko.

"According to my observations based on emails and stories from volunteers and police officers, at most 10% of people agree to proceed. Others ask mostly for medical assistance, less often for psychological assistance, mostly they want to feel safe and not to mention it again for various reasons."

Sometimes people do not trust the justice system, says the human rights activist. But more often they do not turn anywhere, because it means that they have to talk about what hurts. In small settlements near the border with Russia, survivors of violence know people from the police or city authorities who collaborated with the Russians and may fear for their own lives. Larysa Denysenko's clients received "messages" with threats that "seemed quite realistic".

During our conversation, Ms. Olena from Kharkiv Oblast also admitted that she was afraid that she could be found and killed. Immediately after that night, she decided to go to the occupation commandant's office and report the crime. the Russians promised to find the culprit, but this did not happen. According to Larysa Denysenko, Olena acted very bravely, because it could have ended badly for her, given the behavior of the Russians.

"I proceed from the fact that a person must seek protection and save her life by all possible methods in this situation. That is, she is in the territory occupied by the enemy. The enemy in one way or another imposes its regime of existence for people under occupation and actually has (it is their obligation) to respond to the complaints of the civilian population," explains Larysa Denysenko.

Deliberate cruelty and violence

Another case of rape in Kharkiv Oblast was documented by researchers of Human Rights Watch. 31-year-old Olha (her real name was changed by human rights activists) was hiding with other villagers and her family in a school building in the village of Mala Rohan when a Russian soldier burst in at midnight on March 13. He ordered people to kneel and threatened to shoot everyone in the basement. Later, the armed soldier ordered Olha to follow him, leaving her 5-year-old daughter behind, took her to a classroom on the second floor and ordered her to undress.

"He told me to have [oral sex] with him. All the time he kept a gun near my temple or put it to my face. He shot twice at the ceiling and said it was to 'stimulate' me more," the woman told human rights activists.

During the night, the soldier repeatedly raped and beat Olha. He put a knife to her throat, cut the skin on her neck and cheek and cut off some hair. Only at seven in the morning the Russian allowed the woman to leave. Photos she provided to Human Rights Watch showed cuts and bruises on her neck and face. On March 14, Olha's family walked to Kharkiv, where she received medical treatment and was interviewed by prosecutors before leaving the country.

"The cases we have documented represent unspeakable premeditated brutality and violence against civilians in Ukraine," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, "Rape, murder and other violent acts against people under the authority of Russian forces should be investigated as war crimes."

Human Rights Watch stressed that military commanders who did not try to stop or punish the perpetrators bear criminal responsibility for war crimes committed by soldiers.

As a method of warfare

Documenting the crimes of Russians in the territories that have just been liberated shows that the occupation forces use sexual violence systematically, these are not isolated cases, human rights activists believe.

"This applies to absolutely every settlement that is either under occupation or de-occupied," said human rights activist Larysa Denysenko.

"No, this is not a concentration of crimes of this nature in Kyiv Oblast — it happened in Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv oblasts. Unfortunately, this is happening in Kherson Oblast and in the temporarily occupied Mykolaiv Oblast. This is happening everywhere."

The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine opened 43 criminal proceedings related to sexual violence by Russian servicemen in the period from February 24 to July 31. In fact, there may be 100 times more such crimes, according to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.

In the cases investigated by the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the age of the victims of sexual and gender-based violence ranged from 4 to 82 years. The mission documented 9 cases of rape (8 women and one girl), 15 cases of sexual violence as a method of torture or ill-treatment against men and 11 cases of forcing men and women to undress in public.

"This is a matter of intimidation, demonstration of power, domination. Actually, this is part of the illegal treatment of civilians during the war. I do not see any evidence that the command of the Russian Federation forbade its soldiers to do this. If it was not prohibited, it is just encouraged as a genocidal method, a method of intimidation, just a habit of warfare," says human rights activist Larysa Denysenko.

/ By Diana Butsko