Since February 24, 2022, war has been raging in Ukraine with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia. It destroys a country and affects every soul that lives there. Dasha, 16, is one of the victims of this conflict and recounted her hell in the columns of the Parisian. Pregnant and raped by a Russian soldier, she is the human representation of what a war crime is, a teenager whose pain and strength seem to be perceived through the backlit photo that the daily published.
Dasha lived in the village of Krasnivka, taken by the Russians, since liberated by the Ukrainians. In the Kryvyi Rih agricultural high school transformed into a reception center for refugees, she decided to report what she suffered, one last time, before the imminent birth of her baby. To turn the page and move on, perhaps so that the criminal is judged even if the hopes are slim.
Pregnant by a young man who fled to the west, Dasha is with her mother, her 14-year-old sister and her three younger brothers, aged 6, 7 and 11. One morning, two completely drunk soldiers burst into where Dasha and her relatives are. One of them brings her up to a room. “He asked me to undress. I said no. He said to me: ‘So I’m calling twenty comrades.‘” Dasha continues, her gaze unerring: “I didn’t want to, but I had no choice“Her mother is not far away and hears the springs of the mattress creaking. Dasha does not shout, she has no right to: “He ordered me not to make a sound, he was trying to kiss me, he was against me, I wanted to push him away, but he was much stronger, even drunk. He held me by the neck, it suffocated me a little. And he had this booze smell, I could smell it around me.”
The girl suffered unprotected anal penetration, the police will then report. The ordeal does not end there. He takes her with him, shouting to her: “now you will come with me. You have no more mother, no more sisters, no more brothers. you are a whore“He wants to make her drink but Dasha manages to stop him, for her baby. Then other soldiers arrive, young snipers who want to put women and babies under their protection.”According to them, their ‘comrades’ were coming out of prison, released from their jails at the start of the war“, Explain The Parisian. Other rapes will still take place despite this “protection”. The Russians also carried out their investigation, by giving Dasha a “test”: an officer forced her to come with him to a room to undress. Panicked, she falters before the Russian commander explains to her that it was a staging to verify her statements…
In a few days, her baby will be born. Another life awaits Dasha, that of a mother. But always, she will have to fight against these ghosts of the past who broke her so young life.