A young girl “very thin, with tortured eyes”takes refuge in a car and whispers two words: “Help me.” For two months, the scene has been fixed in the memory of Konstantin Gudauskas, the man who was behind the wheel. This Kazakh human rights activist, exiled since 2019 and resident of Boutcha (Ukraine), managed, thanks to his foreign passport, to evacuate 203 people from this martyred city and its surroundings, as he revealed to the World. Among them, at least 17 victims of rape under the Russian occupation, including this teenager of about fifteen years. “She spent ten days imprisoned in a basement. There is not a single day when she has not been raped”he assures franceinfo.
The accounts of witnesses like Konstantin Gudauskas, psychologists and investigators attest to the scale of the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. In addition to the horror of civilian executions, rape is used as a “strategy” by the occupying forces, accused the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova. “A lie”, in the eyes of the Kremlin. Since April 1, “we received 800 calls, most of them having suffered a rape”reports to the World the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Ukrainian Parliament, Lyudmila Denisova. On social networks, the human rights defender reports several specific cases of rape, committed in particular in Boutcha.
The teenager referred to by Konstantin Gudauskas is the first rape victim he encountered during his mission to evacuate civilians to kyiv. “She told me everything during the trip”, he describes to franceinfo. The teenager and her mother were arrested by soldiers on March 1 in Boutcha, then brought to a basement in the neighboring village of Vorzel, he says. Rapes “began on day one”. His mother, attached to his side, was forced to witness this violence in meetings. The troops “raped the girl on a table, one after another”assures, very moved, Konstantin Gudauskas. “They were eight the first evening, then between seven and twelve the following evenings.” His story, precise, is chilling. The victim’s mother was shot in the leg, then succumbed to her injuries in this basement.
“The soldiers were constantly drunk. When the girl passed out, they poured water on her. The medical examinations concluded that she could never have a child.”
Konstantin Gudauskasat franceinfo
On the road linking Boutcha to kyiv, several victims report to Konstantin Gudauskas the threats made by their attackers: “We’re going to rape you to make sure you never have a child from a Ukrainian man.” The human rights activist, tested, cannot continue his story. “My life will not be the same after this war”he breathes.
The Center for Civil Liberties, an NGO currently documenting war crimes in Ukraine, has in turn collected several accusations of rape in the kyiv region. These crimes “are very often accompanied by damage to the health of the survivors of these rapes. There is a lot of cruelty”reports to franceinfo Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the NGO.
“Sexual violence is part of the terror that Russian soldiers have imposed in the occupied territories, in order to quickly gain control of these territories and keep it.”
Oleksandra Matviychuk, director of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraineat franceinfo
In this desire to inflict “terror” to occupied populations, “very often, rapes are committed in front of other people, neighbors, relatives”, she adds. Lawyer Yulia Anosova, whose organization La Strada Ukraine provides psychological and legal support to victims, portrays crimes perpetrated “in the houses of the victims or outside the dwellings”with the aim of causing “a panic within the communities”. Almost all the testimonies collected by La Strada also mention gang rapes, committed by groups of soldiers under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Psychologist Aliona Kryvuliak coordinates the organization’s help lines. She accompanies two women who testified to sexual violence during the occupation of Boutcha. One of them was repeatedly raped by three soldiers one evening at her home, “under the eyes of her three-year-old child”, reports to franceinfo the psychologist. Once again, soldiers told the victim that they would rape her “until she was disgusted with Ukrainian men”, describes the specialist.
“When she told a friend what she had been through, she said she hated herself, she hated her own body. She was thinking about suicide.”
Aliona Kryvuliak, from the organization La Strada Ukraineat franceinfo
Elsewhere in Boutcha, Aliona Kryvuliak’s second patient had taken refuge with eight women and four children in a basement, when five soldiers arrived, according to her account. The soldiers asked the Ukrainian women to choose two women from the group whom they were going to rape. Terrified, the women begged them not to attack them. “The soldiers came back later in the evening, they themselves chose two women whom they raped in front of everyone”, exposes the psychologist. “Six other women were forced to strip”, including his patient. Since then, she lives “in a permanent state of fear”.
According to the testimonies of the survivors of Boutcha, other victims suffered repeated sexual violence, a hell that lasted. Twenty-five adolescent girls and young women, aged 14 to 24, “were systematically raped during the occupation of the basement of a house in Boutcha”, denounced Lyudmila Denisova. The horror lasted twenty-five days according to the New York Times*, and nine of them became pregnant.
A 38-year-old mother told Swiss media RTS of the rapes suffered during “two and a half weeks” and “several times a day” at her home in Boutcha, alongside her daughter.
“They told me, ‘your daughter is very beautiful’. I begged them not to touch her. I told them, ‘do whatever you want with me, but don’t touch her.'”
a Ukrainian living in Boutchaat RTS
So that “the whole world knows who they are, and what they are capable of”Ekatarina (first name has been changed) described being “forced to give them oral sex” and affirms that these soldiers “paraded in turn”. They “always came in groups”. They asked his daughter “to watch so that I learn”, testifies the 13-year-old Ukrainian. She herself recounts having been the victim of sexual assault by eight soldiers.
Women, the first victims of sexual violence, were not the only victims of these crimes in the kyiv region, according to several organizations. La Strada Ukraine and the Center for Civil Liberties have been informed of two cases of male victims of rape. Children, boys and girls, have suffered these same atrocities, according to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Ukrainian Parliament. “11-year-old boy was raped in front of his mother – she was tied to a chair to watch”, she said on social networks*. Shortly after the city’s liberation, psychologist and psychiatrist Lilya Shakalova told the Babel* website that one of her young patients – aged nine – had been raped in her home in Boutcha. According to his account, soldiers “raped the little girl, she started screaming, then they beat the woman who was trying to save her”.
The liberation of the occupied towns north of kyiv brings out, behind the discovery of the mass graves, this other reality. Some victims will not be able to testify. First elements seem to show that women killed by Russian forces were raped before their death, according to Ukrainian forensic doctors quoted by the Guardian*. the New York Times mentions the case of a woman from Boutcha, detained as “sex slave” before its execution. Police found open condom wrappers, as well as a used condom next to her body wearing only a coat.
Since survivors broke the silence, psychologist Aliona Kryvuliak believes that these sexual crimes “are not isolated cases”. “It happened in all the occupied cities of the Kyiv region”, she assures. Boutcha, Irpin, but also the regions of Kharkiv and Mariupol, according to Lyudmila Denisova. For Aliona Kryvuliak, rape is undoubtedly one of the Russian army’s weapons of war.
* Links followed by an asterisk refer to content in English.