Russia’s goal is to 'erase’ Ukraine says Bucha resident

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Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova has made unverified claims that Russian troops “systematically raped” 25 women and girls, some as young as 14, in the town of Bucha. She says nine of them are now pregnant.

She said to BBC News: “Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn’t want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children.”

When the defeated Russian Army retreated from Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, they left behind reams of evidence of war crimes. Bodies of dead civilians were found left on streets, in basements and in mass graves. Many had their hands tied behind their backs and with close-range gunshot wounds.

Last week Russia became the second-ever nation to be suspended from the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council after gruesome images emerged from Bucha of hundreds of civilians all with signs of torture.

Speaking to the BBC, 50-year-old Anna said she had been repeatedly raped at gunpoint and that her husband had been murdered.

She said: “He ordered me, ‘Take your clothes off or I’ll shoot you.’ He kept threatening to kill me if I didn’t do as he said. Then he started raping me.

“When they left, I found drugs and Viagra. They would get high and they were often drunk. Most of them are killers, rapists and looters. Only a few are ok.”

The New York Times reports that another woman, thought to be held as a sex slave, was found locked in a potato cellar dead, naked except for a fur coat. Torn condom wrappers and a used condom were found upstairs.

Ms Denisova wrote on Facebook: “The level of brutality of the army of terrorists and executioners of the Russian Federation knows no bounds – raped children. Rape is strictly prohibited by Article 27 of the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”

In 2000 every member country of the UN, including Russia, voted to pass Resolution 1325, which calls on them to protect women and girls from sexual violence in conflict.

Human Rights Watch says that the laws of war prohibit “wilful killing, rape and other sexual violence, torture, and inhumane treatment of captured combatants and civilians in custody”.

And that anyone who “orders or deliberately commits such acts, or aids and abets them” is responsible for war crimes.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in 2021 that rape and sexual violence as weapons of war are red lines akin to chemical weapons.

Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, told the Security Council on Monday that they are “increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence”.

But Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Gennady Kuzmin denied the allegations and said allies of Ukraine are clearly trying to present Russian soldiers as “sadists and rapists”.

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