Who raped Ukrainians in the Kherson region and why: Telegraf has been collecting evidence for the tribunal against Russia for four days

The International Court of Justice needs mass evidence, so it is important to reveal as many facts of violence as possible

Sexual crimes committed by the Russian military are a very common practice during the war in Ukraine. Soldiers and the command of the Russian army rape, torture and abuse women, men and children in the temporarily occupied and front-line territories in Ukraine. The youngest identified victim who was raped by the Russians was 4 years old, the oldest was 82. Ukrainian law enforcement officers such as the National Police and the Security Service are currently investigating these crimes. The Prosecutor General's Office has even created a special department for crimes of sexual violence related to the conflict (SVRV).

Together with the police, the Prosecutor General's Office created mobile groups of justice that reveal facts of violence in the regions. They are also advised by the psychological rehabilitation project Assisto and Global Rights Compliance, so that all these materials become evidence during the trial at the International Criminal Court. A journalist from Telegraph went on one of these trips. Together with the law enforcement officers, we searched for and documented the facts of violence for four days in the Kherson region and in Kherson city.

People who have experienced sexual violence prefer to just forget about it

All victims spoke to journalists anonymously or with changed names for their own safety.

"One day, Russian soldiers simply broke into my house, put a bag on my head and took me in an unknown direction. At first, they said that I was carrying explosives with me, asked if I was waiting for the Armed Forces, and began to put psychological pressure on me. And then they connected the terminals to my ears, hands and feet and gave them an electric shock. They started watering me so that the current would pass through my body better. They called me a pro-Ukrainian scum. They beat me when they heard that I was waiting for our soldiers to come".

"I was in a cell with other people, we slept on the floor, there was a bottle instead of a toilet. If you are menstruating, no hygiene products were given. They fed us once a day. One day they took me to the office and told me that I should record a video saying that Kherson has become a better place with the arrival of Russia. Or that I distribute aid from Russia. I refused and they electrocuted me. They broke my rib," says one of the first victims we discovered, a fragile girl named Olena, who volunteered even during the occupation. While Olena was in captivity, the Russians conducted "searches" in her home and took away all the food and money, which she collected to buy a car.

In captivity, the girl became a victim of sexual violence.

"They forced me to undress completely, even to remove my underwear. They bent me over and forced me to do it. Then I was undressed and taped to the table. While I was standing naked, I was called a Nazi and other bad words. They put a gun to my head and said that they would shoot me now. After that, about six men entered the room and started talking to me. I was again persuaded to cooperate. I said that I would agree to distribute help from them, and they let me go. But I left and didn't do it. What saved me from their new arrival was that they had already fled to the left bank," the girl says.

Among themselves, Russians called each other simply "colleagues", even without nicknames. "My colleague will hit you now," they said. "Among them there were definitely people from the DPR, because one of them kept saying how people in Donetsk were suffering, how Ukraine had allegedly bombed the city," says Olena.

Her testimony is carefully documented by prosecutor Anna Sosonska, head of the second department of procedural management of pre-trial investigation and maintenance of public accusations in criminal proceedings about crimes related to sexual violence, as well as prosecutor Oleksandr Kleschenko. All victim's statements will be studied and investigated by the local Security Service of Ukraine and the prosecutor's office under the procedural guidance of the PGO.

In order to find the victims, very difficult work is being done. After all, people who have been sexually assaulted very often prefer to forget about it and not report it to law enforcement officers. Therefore, the local police, together with the prosecutors, are studying all cases, traveling around the towns and villages, interviewing the local population, doctors in hospitals in order to learn about stories of strange appeals or pregnancies during the occupation. After all, cases when affected women become pregnant are not uncommon.

Telegraf wrote about rape cases in Kharkiv region when it became known that one of the 14-year-old girls became pregnant by a Russian man. A similar story, according to law enforcement officers, happened in Donetsk region. A Russian soldier raped a 15-year-old girl, and she became pregnant. But due to constant starvation and exhaustion of the body, the girl had a miscarriage.

"In Kherson detention center they raped people right in the corridors"

Men also suffer from sexual violence by Russians. Most often, Russians apply electric current to men's genitals, they can also hang them by the genitals and rape them. They rape in natural and unnatural ways. One of the victims, with whom our publication spoke, said that the men in the Kherson detention center, which the Russians used for torture, were raped with rubber sticks and other objects.

"If they said that now there would be a "Putin's call", it meant that there would be a strong electric shock to the genitals. Some tried to shorten their age after being raped. After all, according to the psychotherapist of the Assisto project, Vasyl Humenyuk, some people's psyche does not cope, the traumatic experience is not lived through, and then this leads to suicidal tendencies.

"Someone told the Russians that I had something to do with the partisans, they followed me and captured me near my house on August 11. My friend pointed to me under torture. They took me to the detention center with a bag over my head. They brought me to the office and wrapped my mouth with tape. They started an interrogation, they wanted me to provide information about our soldiers and volunteers. I didn't say anything and they started the conversation in a different way, beating me with rubber sticks. And then they say: now we will test our new tool on you. It was an machine with current.

They undressed me, took off even my underwear, put me against the wall, attached wires to my genitals and started passing the current. It was the hardest. They started asking me something, but I don't remember everything well. Then the wires were brought to the ears and they began to shock them with electricity. Then my head turned off altogether. It was as if a white ball flew into my head. They did this during interrogations.

Once they bruised the letter Z on my back with sticks. They wrapped my face in a towel and poured water on it, I began to choke. One guy was constantly tortured so much, he said he couldn't stand it and tried to cut his veins with a piece of his own glasses. They constantly tried to encourage my cooperation. They forced me sign some documents, I didn't even see which ones," Andrii, one of the victims from Kherson, told his story.

According to him, these were employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, they said so about themselves, there were also representatives of the FSB, Intelligence and Russian soldiers. The guards behaved most cruelly late at night. According to the victim, they got drunk and started taking everyone out into the corridor: "They covered people with blankets and beat them with rubber batons. They raped them right in the corridors."

Some people did not get out of the detention center — they were killed. Someone was taken to Crimea and to the left bank of the Dnieper. They took out those who were in isolation cells and were in hospitals. The Russians also took the beaten and raped ones with them. There is currently no exact number of those who were deported, but law enforcement officers say that there are many of them.

The Russians were the most brutal with law enforcement officers, volunteers, those who had a pro-Ukrainian position and expressed it openly. Or to military women. They could come to such people many times and beat, torture and pull out their nails. The Russians visited one of the victims, Oksana, a soldier's widow, nine times, starting in March. Once, they staged a mock execution for her, then they stripped her and smashed her face, and in the penultimate visit, her hands were put in boiling water. We told her story here.

They took everyone indiscriminately of any age and gender, the main thing for them was that it was a Ukrainian citizen

Prosecutor Anna Sosonska says that persecution on the basis of nationality is clearly visible in all cases.

"Such a wide range of victims indicates that the Russians did not care who they raped, the main thing was that they were Ukrainian citizens. And if at the same time they have an active pro-Ukrainian position, speak Ukrainian, then this is the first targeting group. Sexual violence is here as an element of genocide. It is committed against both women and men in order to destroy the code of the nation. It's not about sexual pleasure, it's about establishing power over a certain ethnic group," comments the prosecutor.

A separate department was created in Prosecutor General's Office in September to investigate such cases. It can also move victims to temporary shelters.

"Previously , there was no specialization related to wartime sexual violence. Although we have documented sexual violence in war since 2014. The head of our department, Iryna Didenko, started working with this again in March, after Bucha", comments Prosecutor Sosonska." We really need to bring the mass evidence of these cases to the international criminal court. We have been trying to record such facts since 2014, but only six people came to me then. Then this work turned around, for the court it is the mass evidence that is needed. But now the work has been resumed. We work according to the Murad code (international rules on how to treat victims of SVRV, written by Nadiya Murad, a Nobel laureate who suffered sexual violence from ISIS fighters). We provide full confidentiality and safety to the victims," ​​says Sosonska.

According to international legal consultant Julian Elderfield, punishing the Russians specifically for sexual violence may not be easy, especially when it comes to command. After all, to prove that it was not the will of individual soldiers, but an instruction from above, we need as much evidence as possible. Julian has worked with the International Criminal Court and has experience investigating sex crimes in Africa, Lebanon.

"It is likely that the direct executors will be easier to establish, especially if there are some definitive signs, but if you move up to the very middle and senior command, it will be perhaps more difficult. And here even the type of evidence changes, because the victim witnesses will not be able to point to the involvement of the command. For example, insider witnesses who are at the same level of command can help in this. Or intercepted conversations. But getting one can be more difficult and take longer time. Therefore, it is useful for the investigation to get as many similar facts of violence in one area as possible to prove that it is not a coincidence. International tribunals are just interested in bringing the command to justice," says Julian.

Ukrainian law enforcement officers face unprecedented challenges now: the number of victims of sexual violence grows every day. Currently, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, 154 cases of SVRV have been registered. But these numbers will increase, because gradually the victims will have the courage to speak about it, and data will come from the new de-occupied territories, from which information is already being reported about the same atrocities of the Russian army, as in Bucha, Borodyanka, Donetsk region, Kherson region, and Kharkiv region.