“Russian army soldiers raped me and killed my husband”

Russian troops have withdrawn from the areas around Kyiv, but have left deeply wounded lives that may never recover from the trauma. The BBC heard first-hand accounts and found evidence of Ukrainian women being raped by invading soldiers.

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Warning: this report contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence

In a quiet, rural neighborhood 70 kilometers west of kyiv, we talk to Anna, who is 50 years old. We have changed her name to protect her identity.

Anna told us that she was at home with her husband on March 7 when a foreign soldier broke in.

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“At gunpoint, he took me to a nearby house. He ordered: ‘Take off your clothes or I’ll kill you’. He kept threatening to kill me if he didn’t do what he told me. Then he started raping me,” she recounted.

Anna described her attacker as a young, slim Chechen fighter allied with Russia.

“While he was raping me, four more soldiers came in. I thought I was finished. But they took him away. I never saw him again,” she said. She believes that she was saved by a different unit of Russian soldiers.

Anna came home and found her husband. She had been shot in the abdomen.

“He had tried to run after me to save me, but he was hit by a gunshot,” she explained.

Both sought refuge in a neighbor’s house. They were unable to take her husband to the hospital due to the fighting. She died from her injuries two days later.

Anna never stopped crying as she told us her story. She showed us the place where she and her neighbors buried her husband, in the backyard of her house. A tall wooden cross stands at the head of the tomb. Anna told us that she is in contact with the local hospital and is receiving psychological support.

Anna buried her husband in the back garden of their house.

The soldiers who saved her stayed at her house for a few days. She says they pointed her gun at her and asked her to give them her husband’s belongings.

“When did they leave, I found drugs and Viagra. They took drugs and were often drunk. Most of them are murderers, rapists and looters. only a few are ok“, said.

Walking down the street from Anna’s house, we hear another chilling story.

A woman was allegedly raped and murdered. Neighbors say it was done by the same man who later raped Anna in her house.

The woman was in her 40s. She was taken from her house, her neighbors say, and held in the bedroom of a nearby house that had been evicted by its occupants when the war began. The well-decorated room, with ornate wallpaper and a bed with a gilt headboard, is now the scene of a haunting crime. There are large blood stains on the mattress and comforter.

In one corner is a mirror with a note written in lipstick that seems to suggest where the victim was buried.

On the bedroom mirror, a lipstick message reads: "Tortured by strangers, buried by Russian soldiers".

Oksana, a neighbor, told us that it had been left there by Russian soldiers who found the woman’s body and buried her. “They [los soldados rusos] they told me she had been raped and had her throat slit or stabbed, and bled to death. They said there was a lot of blood.”

The woman was buried in a tomb in the garden of the house.

One day after our visit, the police exhumed his body to investigate the case. The body was found without clothes and with a deep and long cut on the neck.

Andrii Nebytov, the police chief of the kyiv region, told us about another case they are investigating in a town 50 km away. west of Kyiv.

A family of three, a couple in their 30s and their young son, lived in a house on the outskirts of town.

“On March 9, several Russian army soldiers entered the house. The husband tried to protect his wife and son. So they shot him in the yardNebytov said.

“After that, two soldiers repeatedly raped the wife. They left and then came back. They came back three times to rape her. They threatened her that if she resisted they would harm her little son.. To protect her son, she did not resist“.

When the soldiers left, they burned the house and shot dead the family’s dogs.

The family’s house burned down. His dogs, also killed, were lying in the garden (not seen in the photo).

The woman escaped with her son and later contacted police. Nebytov says that her team met with her and recorded her testimony.

Police services have been collecting evidence at the family’s home, where only rubble now remains. Only a few signs of a previous life, ordinary and peaceful, lie in the charred ruins. We saw a child’s bike, a stuffed horse, a dog’s leash, and a men’s winter shoe.

The husband was buried in the garden by the neighbors. Police have already exhumed her body for examination. They plan to take the case to international courts..

Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, says that they are documenting several such cases.

“About 25 girls and women between the ages of 14 and 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of a house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant“, said.

“The Russian soldiers told them that they would rape them to the point that they would not want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children.”

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A child’s toy lies on the grounds of the burned family home.

She says that they are receiving several calls on the victim help lines and also getting information through the Telegram messaging application.

“A 25-year-old woman called to tell us that her 16-year-old sister was raped on the street in front of her. She said they were yelling, ‘This will happen to all Nazi prostitutes!’ while they raped her sister.” Denisova said.

We asked if it was possible to assess the extent of sexual crimes committed by Russian troops during the occupation.

“It’s impossible right now because not all victims are willing to tell us what happened to them. Right now, most of them ask for psychological support, so we can’t register them as crimes unless they give us their testimony,” Denisova said.

She says Ukraine wants the United Nations to set up a special tribunal to personally try Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes, including rape.

“I want to ask Putin, why is this happening?”. said Anna, the woman who told us that she was raped. “I don’t get it. We don’t live in the Stone Age, why can’t she negotiate? Why is she occupying and killing?”

With additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Anastasiia Levchenko, Daria Sipigina and Sanjay Ganguly.

Source: Elcomercio