UN Documents Over a Thousand Cases of Sexual Violence in the War in Ukraine — 89% Committed by Russians

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has documented 1,004 cases of sexual violence in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. According to the agency, 89% of these crimes were committed by members of various Russian security and law enforcement bodies — including military personnel, FSB officers, staff of the federal penitentiary service, police and Rosgvardia troops.

Most of the victims were men: 725 men, 151 women, 14 girls and two boys were subjected to sexual violence by Russian forces. According to the 20-page report, violence was most frequently used against prisoners of war and detainees: eight male POWs and three women were raped, one of them in a group assault, along with 13 detained civilians (nine women and four men), two of the women having survived gang rape.

Violence Outside Places of Detention

Outside places of detention — mostly at the hands of servicemen — 46 women, one man and ten girls were raped, fifteen of them in group assaults, with others raped repeatedly. Three of the surviving women subsequently gave birth to children.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was deeply alarmed by the scale of the crimes documented in the report and feared they were still ongoing. "Sexual violence is a significant feature of the wide-ranging armed attack on Ukraine. It must stop immediately, regardless of who is responsible. Given the high number of cases attributed to the forces of the Russian Federation, it is the Russian Federation that must take concrete, visible steps to protect civilians and prisoners of war," Türk stressed.

According to the report, the Russian Federation has made no effort to prevent, investigate or prosecute acts of sexual violence committed by members of its own forces.

The Brutality of the Cases

Many of the rapes were carried out with extreme brutality. One Ukrainian prisoner of war said he had been raped with a baton, another with a door handle. A 60-year-old civilian had a bag placed over his head and was tortured for six hours — his fingers were subjected to electric shocks, he was beaten on the head with armoured gloves and choked, then thrown into the back of a vehicle, driven to another yard and raped with the handle of a spade.

A resident of Zaporizhzhia said a serviceman was billeted in her home for a month and raped her several times a week, promising better treatment for her detained husband in return. Another woman said she was raped every night while in Kherson. A woman from the Kyiv region described how two soldiers shot her husband dead and threatened to kill her in front of her four-year-old son unless she submitted.

In March 2023, two servicemen forced a man to watch as they raped his menstruating wife while mocking him, after which one of them assaulted their four-year-old daughter.

Torture with Electric Shocks

Torturers frequently targeted victims' genitals: 246 detainees and prisoners of war were beaten in this area, and 155 prisoners of war were tortured with electric current — using either a taser or an outdated field telephone, in which current was generated by turning a hand crank and wires were attached to the genitals.

On the Ukrainian side, the most common practices were threats of sexual violence, forced undressing, as well as beatings to the genitals and electric shock torture applied to intimate areas.

The report is based on anonymous interviews with victims of sexual violence between 24 February 2022 and 31 July 2026, supplemented by other documentary evidence.

Source: novinky.cz