Russian Soldiers Kept Ukrainian Women In Basement For 25 Days; 9 Are Now Pregnant

(Trigger Warning: The story contains graphic details and photographs of violence and rape which could be triggering for some readers.)

Russian soldiers may have withdrawn from Kyiv, Ukraine, but the trauma that the people had to go through will stay forever.

Details of horrific crimes have come to the forefront in Ukraine. Multiple war crime investigators have revealed the monstrous details of crimes committed by Russian soldiers.

Reuters

According to new details that have been uncovered, Ukrainian women and girls were kept in a Bucha basement for 25 days.

Agencies

Ukraine¡¯s official ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, has confirmed that nine are now pregnant. Sharing details of multiple cases of rape, abuse, and torture by Russian troops, Denisova said affected areas are Bucha, outside Kyiv, and several other Ukrainian towns.

Reuters

After Moscow withdrew from northern Ukraine, several pieces of evidence give us a closer look at atrocities committed while Russian troops when they had held the town.

Agencies

Indiscriminate killings, torture, and other violence against civilians have been their most notorious crimes.

In unverified claims, Denisova claimed about 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were ¡°systematically¡± raped. They were held hostage in the basement of one house in Bucha, leaving nine of them pregnant.

Reuters

In a conversation with BBC, she said, ¡°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."

A 14-year-old girl was pregnant after being raped by five men, and an 11-year-old boy was raped in front of his mother as she was tied to a chair.

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She shared another incident where a 20-year-old woman was raped by ¡°three occupiers in all possible ways at once¡± in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which Russian forces partially occupied.

¡°The level of brutality of the army of terrorists and executioners of the Russian Federation knows no bounds ¨C raped children,¡± she wrote on Facebook. ¡°There is no place on earth or in hell where racist criminals can hide from retribution!¡±

She appealed to the UN Human Rights Commission to ¡°take into account these facts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.¡±

Ukraine's Bucha killing | AFP

In another heartbreaking incident, in a quaint rural neighborhood 70km (45miles) west of Kyiv, Anna (name changed to protect identity), who is 50, shared that on 7 March, she was at home with her husband when a foreign soldier barged in.

BBC quoted her as saying,

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"At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. 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."

Describing her attacker as a young, thin, Chechen fighter allied with Russia, Anna added,

"While he was raping me, four more soldiers entered. I thought I was done for. But they took him away. I never saw him again," she said. She believes a 'separate unit of Russian soldiers saved her.' After Anna returned home, she found that her husband had been shot in the abdomen.

On Monday, a senior UN official Sima Bahous told the Security Council that while all allegations must be independently investigated, ¡°the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians has raised all red flags.¡±

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¡°We are increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence,¡± she said.

Russia¡¯s deputy UN ambassador Gennady Kuzmin denied the allegations and accused Ukraine and its allies of ¡°a clear intention to present Russian soldiers as sadists and rapists.¡±

Agencies

Last week Russia became just the second-ever nation to be suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council. The suspension was a step taken after images showing bodies of civilians lying in the streets with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds, and signs of torture were released.

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