Liberated Ukrainian cities have Russian rape allegations

Day after day, city after city, a police officer and a prosecutor go door to door in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Treading muddy streets, passing houses damaged by artillery attacks, they look for those left behind.

A mother and daughter appear in the backyard. “We are looking for sex crimes,” says prosecutor Oleksandr Kleshchenko.

Until the beginning of October, this area of ​​the country was occupied by Russian troops. Burnt-out cars litter the fields. The letter ‘Z’ – a symbol used by Russian forces – marks the walls.

The scars of war run deep here. Russia used sexual violence as a “weapon of war” – a deliberate “military strategy” – in its conquest of Ukraine, UN investigators said. They even relayed claims of Russian soldiers carrying Viagra.

Russian authorities have denied allegations of war crimes in Ukraine.

In two weeks of work in the Kherson region, the Kiev team documented six allegations of sexual assault. The real number is almost certainly much higher, they say.

Tatiana, 56, claims to be one of the victims. THE CNN preserved his surname and that of his village to protect his identity.

Walking over broken glass, she shows us her brother’s house, where she says two Russian soldiers forced their way through her door on August 26th.

“They walked through those rooms,” she says. “One stayed there, and the other, who raped me, came in here. He came in, walked a little around the room and here in this place, he started to feel me.”

“I told him, ‘No, no, I’m not old enough to give you something, look for younger girls.’

He pinned her against the wardrobe, she says, and ripped her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but to no avail,” she says. “The only thought I had was to stay alive.”

He warned her not to tell anyone, she remembers. “I didn’t tell my husband right away,” she says, in tears. “But I told my cousin, and my husband listened. He said, ‘You should have told me the truth, but you kept silent.’

“I was really embarrassed,” she says. “I wish he and all his relatives were dead.”

She spent three days at home, stunned, too embarrassed to leave. Then, in an extraordinary act of bravery, she says she confronted the Russian soldier’s commander.

“Your commander found the head of your unit. He came to see me and said: ‘I punished him severely, I broke my jaw, but the most severe punishment is yet to come.’ The commander asked me, ‘Do you mind that?’ I said, ‘I don’t care, I’d like everyone to be shot’.”

Although prosecutor Kleshchenko and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are specifically looking for evidence of sex crimes, wherever they go, they are confronted with the horrors of the occupation.

In these liberated villages, almost all the buildings were damaged by the war. Many houses were reduced to rubble.

On your first stop on the day the CNN accompanied investigators, in Bila Krynytsya, a crowd waiting for food donations surrounded the promoter.

The village was behind Russian lines, but never directly occupied. Those gathered around scream that they have been abandoned for months, with no help from Russia or Ukraine.

“You reported [o dano] to someone?” asks the promoter. “Who should we report to?” answers a man in the crowd.

A man in the crowd tells investigators he was detained by Russian soldiers and subjected to a mock execution. It’s hard to hear, stories of torture like this are common here, but that’s not the subject of their work today.

Despite these villagers’ dissatisfaction, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in this part of the country has fueled public hopes that victory may indeed be possible – or at least that Kyiv can liberate key Russian-held cities such as Kherson.

Starting slowly in late summer and largely in early October, Ukrainian forces reclaimed hundreds of square kilometers of territory that Russia had held since the early days of its full-scale invasion.

A short drive along bombed-out roads in Tverdomedove, a mother and daughter tell Kleshchenko that they have not heard of any sex crimes in their roadside village.

Her neighbor Vera Lapushnyak, 71, is sobbing uncontrollably. The Russians were kind when they arrived, she says. “They said they came to protect us,” she recalls. “But from whom, why – we didn’t know.”

She was widowed for over 30 years – she says her husband died in a motorcycle accident – ​​and her son joined the army shortly after the invasion of Russia on February 24. She decided to leave, she says, about three months after Russian troops occupied her village.

Months later, after the Ukrainian military liberated her village in a lightning counteroffensive, she returned. The bombings reduced its roof to rafters.

“I don’t know where to sleep right now,” she says, in tears. “There are no windows or doors” She shows us inside. Her bedroom ceiling completely collapsed. She’s moved her bed into the only room that still has a window intact.

“I don’t know where to put it [o teto] don’t fall on my head,” she says. “If you fell and killed me, it would be better, so I wouldn’t suffer. But I want to see my son again.”

As the sun sets at the end of a long day, the two-man team arrives in Novovoznesens’ke, a village where they discovered two more cases of rape, allegedly committed by Russian soldiers. The next day, they return to Kiev to present their findings.

Of course, many of these claims will be impossible to prove; many don’t even have a suspect. For now, the team is shelving its reports and its investigators continue their work, hoping to be able to file charges in the future.

The UN says it has investigated cases in Ukraine of “sexual and gender-based violence” against people aged 4 to 82. As of September, 43 criminal cases had been initiated, according to the UN.

Police officer Svidro says most cases of sexual violence go unreported. Work takes its toll. “It’s psychologically difficult,” he says. “You understand that all people are distressed. But this is important work.”

*With the collaboration of journalist Maria Avdeeva