Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war.
[1] The United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner issued a report on human rights violations and war crimes in October 2022; in the opening summary section, it stated, "Furthermore, the Commission documented patterns of summary executions, unlawful confinement, torture, ill-treatment, and rape and other sexual violence committed in areas occupied by Russian armed forces across the four provinces on which it focused.
Children have become the victims of the full spectrum of violations investigated by the Commission, including indiscriminate attacks, torture and rape, and have suffered the predictable psychological consequences.
OHCHR stated that reports to a national telephone hotline service indicated a high risk of sexual violence, and that several factors made under-reporting likely.
Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid "called for an urgent end to the use of rape and other sexual crimes as a tactic of war in Ukraine".
[15] Ukraine's prosecutor general commented that acts of sexual violence is massively under reported due to the difficulty investigators faced in Russian occupied areas and the fear and shame experienced by survivors, "To investigate sexual crimes on the occupied territory, when we are still in the military conflict, is very hard," said Ukraine's prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova.
[25][26][27][28] The United Nations reported in January 2023, that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had documented over 90 cases of sexual violence in Russian occupied areas.
[31][32] Since the beginning of the invasion, the Ukrainian Security Service has been monitoring and releasing communications, mainly phone calls, made by Russian soldiers and officials.
[40] Prior to the launch of the United Kingdom Government's housing scheme for refugees, one woman reported a man who attempted to have her stay with him and promised free accommodation, food, expenses and a monthly allowance in return for sex.
[46][45] In late March, the Prosecutor General, Venediktova, started an investigation into a claim of Russian soldiers shooting a man and then raping his wife.
[61] Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on a 13 March beating and rape of a 31-year-old woman in the village of Mala Rohan in Kharkiv Raion, which at the time was controlled by the Russian Armed Forces.
[8] The BBC News interviewed a 50-year-old woman from a village 70 kilometres (70,000 m) west of Kyiv, who said she was raped at gunpoint by a Chechen allied with the Russian Armed Forces.
[69] The New York Times described how one woman was "held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed", found after the late March 2022 liberation of the Kyiv region.
[71] In June 2023, The Sunday Times reported on two former Ukrainian soldiers who had been tortured by Russians while in captivity and castrated with a knife, before being freed in a prisoner of war swap.
[76] In August 2022, Ukraine's prosecutor general's office reported that there were "several dozen" criminal proceedings underway for sexual violence committed by Russian servicemen.
[78][79] Ukrainian Prosecutor Iryna Didenko stated in January 2023 that their office had opened 154 cases related to acts sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers, but cautioned that the actual number of incidents is probably far higher.
They stated that doctors and mental health workers had determined that in the Kyiv Oblast one in nine women had experienced sexual violence during the Russian occupation.