Ukrainian officials are reportedly investigating claims that Russian soldiers killed a woman’s husband and then repeatedly raped her in a village outside of Kyiv.
“I was screaming where is my husband, then I looked outside and saw him lying on the ground by the gate. This younger guy put the gun to my head and said, ‘I shot your husband because he was a Nazi is’,” the woman, who used the alias Natalya, told the Times of London in an article published on Monday.
The woman said she was raped by the man, who killed her husband and another soldier.
“He told me to undress. Then they both raped me one after the other. They didn’t care that my son was crying in the boiler room. They told me to shut him up and come back,” she told the British newspaper.
Ukraine’s Attorney General Iryna Venediktova said in a Facebook post last week that a Russian soldier killed an unarmed civilian and then repeatedly raped his wife, according to The New York Times. The incident reportedly happened on March 9th.
The soldier is currently wanted for arrest “on suspicion of violating the laws and customs of war,” the report added.
This is the first probe into allegations of rape by Russian soldiers since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a month ago.
When asked at a press conference about the investigation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We do not trust the information about the rape of a woman at all. That’s a lie.”
“We do not trust the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. Russian troops do not beat or shoot civilians. Russian troops are helping civilians,” Peskov said.
Ukraine’s Parliament Minister Maria Mezentseva told Sky News on Monday that cases like Natalya’s must be recorded because “justice must prevail”.
Mezentseva added that there are many other victims in similar circumstances that have not yet been made public by the Attorney General.
This isn’t the first time Ukraine has accused Russian soldiers of committing atrocities. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba earlier said Russian soldiers were committing rapes in Ukrainian cities and used the allegations to criticize the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Speaking at an event in London earlier this month, Kuleba said: “When bombs fall on your cities, when soldiers rape women in the occupied cities – and unfortunately we have numerous cases of Russian soldiers raping women in Ukrainian cities – it’s difficult of course, to talk about the effectiveness of international law,” Reuters reported.