Men scattered throughout Ukraine are helping one another recover from sexual trauma inflicted by Russian troops. These are some of their stories.
Warning: This story discusses sexual violence.
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UN: More than half of Ukrainian sexual violence victims are male
Overwhelming evidence suggests Russia has weaponised sexual violence — such as rape, genital mutilation, forced stripping and other means of torture — against men and boys in Ukraine over the past two years. Under international law, these constitute war crimes.
The latest United Nations Security Council report into conflict-related sexual violence states the investigatory body has documented 263 cases perpetrated by Russian armed forces, law enforcement authorities and penitentiary services against civilians and prisoners of war in Ukraine since the 2022 full-scale invasion. Over half of these victims are male (163); 83 are female. 10 are underage girls, and two are boys.
Thats not even the half of it. I remember reading back in 2022 about a month after the war started that a group of 5 russian soldiers fucked an infant girl to death. When I say infant, I mean like 3 months old, and FIVE DIFFERENT RUSSIAN SOLDIERS decided “Yeah, this human thats barely more than a fetus is what I feel like having sex with”.
Now the article didn’t go into when exactly the infant died, but I have to imagine it was fairly early. Which, again, I haven’t read this part as fact, but an educated guess would imply that 4 of those soldiers not only fucked an infant girl, but a DEAD infant at that!
At the time I read that, I thought “Theres no way these actions were official military actions with orders from above”. Meaning these were the actions of 5 sick fucks, and not representitive of the military orders given by the chain of command.
Now, I kind of think theres a decent chance it was. I’m more leaning into the idea of that command DID come from above. I haven’t read that, but gut feeling with erything else that’s happened says it probably did.
This war has been gross, and the more I look into it, the more horrifying things I learn about war in general as it pertains to rape and suffering.