Russian troops carried out nearly 900 horrifying acts of sexual violence against Ukrainian civilians and POWs during the deadly war, including raping kids as little as 4-years-old, a disturbing new United Nations report found.
The “widespread” barbaric torture by strongman Vladimir Putin’s soldiers, prison staff and national security service officers included rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings of prisoners’ genitals, according to the findings.
Sixteen children were violently sexually assaulted among the 892 victims detailed in the report, which was released Friday by the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
“I am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts … and fear that they are almost certainly continuing amid the unceasing violence we are witnessing every day in Ukraine,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in a statement.
“Sexual violence is a grave feature of the full-scale armed attack against Ukraine. It must stop immediately, irrespective of the perpetrators.”
Men accounted for 725 of the victims between Feb. 24, 2022 — shortly after Putin launched his invasion — and July 31 of this year.
The 151 female victims, ranging in age from 4 to 82, faced electric shocks to breasts, forced nudity, beatings while nude, and were forced to watch sexual violence of fellow captives, the findings document.
Forty six women, including 10 girls, said they were raped by Russian military, including a four-year-old girl and an 82-year-old woman, according to the report.
Three of those women had children born of rape.
Viktoria Martsyniuk, a mom from a rural village northwest of Kyiv, said she was raped by a Russian soldier roughly the same age as her sons, the 42-year-old told the Telegram.
Martsyniuk’s neighbor was also gang raped by a group of Russians and then forced to witness the killing of her husband who was shot at point blank range, the outlet reported.
Those soldiers never faced justice for the war crimes.
“I feel a little bit better with the therapy, but I would like to improve and if Ukraine has victory I will feel even better,” she told the outlet in 2022.
Roughly 75% of former POWs and nearly half of all Ukrainian civilians who were held captive by the Russian military reported being sexually assaulted more than once, according to the HRMM.
Ukrainian medical personnel were also targeted in Moscow’s campaign of violence.
Detained Ukrainian civilians were sexually assaulted on a widespread basis “throughout” internment and during interrogations, the report found.
Meanwhile, at least 155 men said they were tasered on their genitals with a Soviet-era military field telephone called a “tapik.”
One male POW said he was sodomized with a police baton; another was forcibly penetrated with cell door keys; and a Ukrainian civilian was raped with the handle of a shovel, according to the findings.
The report characterized the sexual violence against POWs as “frequent and systematic” — and added that Russia has done nothing to stem the the brutal behavior.
“The Russian Federation has failed to take any discernible steps to prevent, investigate, or prosecute sexual violence committed by its personnel,” and instead has “enacted legal provisions that provide broad impunity for crimes, including sexual violence,” according to the report.
Russia has committed 89% of all sex crimes during the its invasion, compared to Ukraine’s 11%, according to the UN.
“Given the high prevalence of cases attributed to its forces,” Turk demanded “the Russian Federation in particular must take concrete and discernible steps to protect civilians and prisoners of war from all forms of torture, including sexual violence.”
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