Ukraine still trying to accept the horror of what happened in Bucha. After the images of corpses lying in the streets and inert bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, the case of more than twenty girls and adolescents constantly raped for weeks by Russian soldiers has come to light.
The Ukrainian Ombudsman, Lyudmila Denisova, reported this Monday to the media ‘The New York Times’ the rape of 25 girls and adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14 in a basement from the town of Bucha. According to his own statements, nine of them have been pregnant. “The Russian soldiers told them that they would rape them in such a way that they would not want to have sex with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children,” he added. The mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, He confirmed it this Tuesday but has assured that they will not reveal more details to protect his identity.
The rape as a weapon of war is a assertion of power and dominance. A strategy for subdue the enemy through women, to make him flee from his lands, to embarrass him. It is a cheap and effective weapon and leaves behind a trail of consequences, physical and psychological, both for the victims and their environment.
In a war in which brutality is becoming the general tone, the case of these girls has brought to the fore the reality of many women who remain trapped in Ukraine. “We carefully document every atrocity, every crime. We have created a special online archive of these crimes so that the world knows the truth and to hold russians accountable for every drop of Ukrainian blood they shed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement. In addition to these girls, he added, dozens of women and children have been raped and murdered. Last Wednesday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, accused the invading forces of perpetrating “hundreds of rapes” on women and also girls: “Hundreds of cases of rape have been recorded, including those of underage girls and very young children. Even a baby!”
The work of NGOs
The UN agency dedicated to women and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch They have echoed the proven cases or complaints of sexual assault by the Russian military. The Ukrainian branch of the NGO the streetwhich 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, a person in charge of the organization told AFP by telephone. Aliona Kryvuliak. But they fear that reality is far superior.
Many cases, of which it will never be known exactly what happened, are known through the bodies abandoned on the roads or buried in mass graves. An example is that of the chilling image taken by the photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20 kilometers from kyiv. In the snapshot, the bodies of a man and several women appeared piled under a blanket. They were naked and their bodies had been partially burned, according to the photographer. There will hardly be a way to verify what happened to them, and like them, hundreds of women will have suffered without ever being able to tell what happened or point out their rapists.
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The Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, He assured this Tuesday that, with his investigation after the Russian invasion, he has information that “alleged war crimes are being or have been committed” in around “6,000 places” on Ukrainian territory. The attorney general explained that she is doing “everything possible” to collect the evidence of violations of humanitarian law being committed in Ukraine since the end of February and expressed his hope that “war criminals can be brought to justice” with international help.
In his usual line, the Russian Ministry of Defense He has denied all the accusations, which he considers an attempt by Washington to spread false information for propaganda purposes. “The United States, which has many years of experience in organizing provocations with human victims, continues its campaign to create and promote false evidence & rdquor ;, she has pointed out.