Her voice cracking with emotion, Elena — her name has been changed — tries to speak despite everything. Chosen by Russian soldiers for being the wife of a Ukrainian soldier, she was raped for hours by two of them, according to her account to AFP.
This testimony exemplifies the fears of human rights organizations that show evidence of the use of rape as a “weapon of war” in Ukraine.
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interviewed in Zaporiyiaa city where thousands of displaced people forced to leave their homes by the Russian occupation in the south of Ukrainethis blonde woman is waiting for a bus to join her four children in Vinnytsiain the center of the country.
From the first day of the invasion, February 24, he sent them there, far from his home in the Kherson region (south), in the front line once morest the advancing Russians.
Her husband, who has been fighting pro-Russian separatists for two years in the Donbásin the east of Ukrainewas sent to the front and Elena was left alone to move her belongings.
But as a result of the danger of that journey and the presence of Russian soldiers, she was unable to find a vehicle to empty her house and it was then that the tragedy occurred, on the followingnoon of April 3, says this mother of a family.
“Around 3:00 p.m. I went to a store. While I was queuing, Russian soldiers came in and started arguing with customers.” keep going.
“I didn’t understand what they were talking regarding, but I realized that one of the inhabitants was pointing his finger at me saying ‘it’s a banderovka’”, remembers Elena. The man was referring to those nostalgic for the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany once morest the Soviet Union.
“’It’s because of people like her that this war broke out. She is the wife of a military man.’”added the man, according to Elena.
“Without any word”
“I saw that they were watching me when I quickly left the store. I barely made it home when the two Russian soldiers came through the door behind me. I didn’t have time to pick up the phone to call for help or do anything.” dice.
“Without a word they pushed me onto the bed, placed a machine gun on me and undressed me,” recounts the young woman before bursting into tears.
“They hardly spoke, besides sometimes treating me as ‘banderovka’ or saying to each other ‘it’s your turn’. Then, around four o’clock, they left because it was their turn to stand guard” at their camp.
Elena says she hasn’t talked to anyone yet, not even a doctor or a psychologist, let alone her husband.
“I am a midwife, I did the first cures myself”, Explain. “I will find everything I need once I reach my destination. I just want to be reunited with my children, ”she adds.
When asked regarding her physical and psychological state, she begins to cry once more: “I disgust myself. I no longer want to live”.
green number
The Ukrainian branch of the NGO La Strada, which defends women’s rights, has so far received “calls concerning seven cases of rape of Ukrainian women and children by Russian occupiers” on its green number, it said by phone. AFP a person in charge of the organization, Aliona Kryvuliak.
But he believes there will be much higher numbers as the shock of the victims begins to wear off.
“There can be hundreds, even thousands, of women and girls raped”estimates Kryvuliak.
The first call, on March 4, from Kherson, spoke of “the gang rape of a mother and her 17-year-old daughter by three men.” The other cases were reported in the kyiv region “following March 12,” he notes.
“Russian soldiers committed sexual violence once morest Ukrainian women and men, once morest children and the elderly”he said in a statement released this week Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova.
The prosecutor insisted on the need to gather evidence, although she recognized the difficulty of doing so in a country at war, in areas where the telephone signal or the electrical network are disturbed.
But it is undoubtedly a more expeditious justice that Elena imagines for her rapists and their accomplices.
“I am sure that Ukraine will recover those territories from Russian soldiers and that ours will take revenge,” she says.
“And I will point the finger at those villagers who pointed at me. I will show them with my finger to my husband”he promises, without revealing what punishment he believes would be equal to the crime he suffered.
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