Russia’s top military leadership encourages acts of sexual violence by its troops. It even rewards perpetrators with the country’s highest honors, according to Kateryna Levchenko, Ukraine’s Government Commissioner for Gender Policy.
Speaking at a briefing hosted by Media Center Ukraine, Levchenko said Ukraine is working to build a strong legal case to prove that sexual violence against civilians and prisoners of war by russian forces is not only widespread but also systematic, a necessary step to have russia officially recognized at the United Nations as a state that commits sexual violence in conflict.
“We must prove the facts of numerous cases of conflict-related sexual violence,” Levchenko said. “It is important for us to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, which tracks such incidents. This is undoubtedly the responsibility of law enforcement and international organizations documenting these crimes.”
She underscored that establishing a pattern of systemic abuse is just as critical.
“Sexual crimes committed against Ukrainians are supported at the highest levels of russia’s military leadership,” Levchenko said. “After russian forces retreated from the Kyiv region and returned to russia, some were awarded the honorary title of ‘guardsmen’, a clear indication that these crimes were committed with the consent of the top command.”
Levchenko also stressed the importance of demonstrating that such crimes have been occurring since the beginning of russia’s aggression in 2014, not only since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
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Reuters reported already las year that Russian commanders encourage sexual violence in Ukraine.
There is evidence that Russian commanders in several instances were aware of sexual violence by military personnel in Ukraine “and in some cases, encouraging it or even ordering it,” according to an international criminal lawyer assisting Kyiv’s war crimes investigations.
British lawyer Wayne Jordash told Reuters that in some areas around the capital of Kyiv in the north [...]some of the sexual violence involved a level of organisation by Russian armed forces that “speaks to planning on a more systematic level.” [...]
A woman from the village of Berestianka, near Kyiv, told Reuters that shortly after Russian troops arrived in March a soldier ordered her to hang a white rag outside her house. He returned that night with two other Russians, according to the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name Viktoriia.
She said one of them, who she took to be a commander because he appeared to be much older and because that’s how the others referred to him, told her the two other soldiers were drunk and wanted to have fun.
According to Viktoriia, a slim-built 42-year old, those two soldiers walked her to a neighbouring house, where one shot dead a man when he tried to prevent them taking his wife. The two soldiers then took both women to a nearby house, where Viktoriia said she was raped by one of them. The other woman was also raped, according to that woman’s sister and Viktoriia. Reuters was unable to reach the second woman, whose family said had left Ukraine.
When Reuters visited the village in July, splattered blood was visible in the location where the sister and her mother said the man was shot. Viktoriia said she cried uncontrollably after her experience and remains easily frightened by loud noises.
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