A 20-year-old Ukrainian girl will never be able to forget the invasion of her village by Russian soldiers, but she has no intention of letting her traumas control her life.
Karina remembers the hand he placed on her back as he pushed her into the dark attic room. Then the Russian soldier pointed a gun at them and drove them further into the black depths of the small bombed area.
The Russian soldier stood a few inches away from her, his breathing still heavy with whiskey, he pointed his gun at her head and threatened to kill her if she didn’t undress in front of him.
With shaking hands, Karina followed his orders, knowing that if she tried to fight him like she desperately wanted, she would never see her mother’s face again.
“And then he raped me,” Karina tells the Chron in a hesitant voice as she recalls what happened on March 11, 2022.
“After he was done, he told me he would come back and kill me if I told anyone how he raped me,” she continued.
Karina was 20 years old when Putin’s men arrived in her village in huge tanks on March 8, 2022. Within minutes of their arrival, they terrorized the families living there and broke into their homes.
If she had thought about the bombings, Karina could not have imagined the horrors the Russian soldiers would inflict on her.
Artillery fire
On the second day, they began going door to door and breaking into families’ homes, sometimes holding them hostage.
“When the Ukrainian soldiers started firing artillery at the Russians near our village, they blamed my friend and me for giving away their positions,” says Karina.
Then a soldier took her out of her house and accused her of informing the Ukrainian army about Russian positions.
He dragged her to her neighbor’s abandoned house, where her nightmare began.
“I remember seeing used condoms scattered on the floor. I knew I wasn’t the first to be taken there,” says Karina.
After interrogating her and then raping her, the soldier threatened her that he would do it again if the bombing didn’t stop.
In the days that followed, Karina, initially trying to stay afloat, burst into tears.
“At one point I broke down and cried for hours. I felt like I was dirty and shameful,” she admits.
Run away at all costs
However, she quickly regained her calm as the prospect of further bombings forced her to act.
“I decided there would be no next time. I knew I had to do something,” says Karina.
Under the cover of darkness, she and her boyfriend fled their home and walked for miles through fields, forests and train tracks until they reached a nearby village in the Kiev area.
There she found refuge with a close friend, who helped her report the rape to the national police and prosecutors when her village was liberated a few weeks later.
Karina says her relationship with her boyfriend didn’t last because he was angry with her for telling her friends and family what happened to her.
“It really affected our relationship,” laments Karina, who struggles to explain why her boyfriend wasn’t on her side.
“He wanted me to stay silent and not talk about it,” she says sadly.
Instead, Karina hopes that by telling her story of survival and the horrors she witnessed and experienced, other women will speak up and testify about what happened to them.
“It’s very important not to remain silent because the soldiers who did this will live normal lives if we don’t say anything, and that’s not fair,” she says.
Identify your rapist
Karina says that when she reported the rape to prosecutors, they provided her with photos of Russian soldiers who had invaded her village.
“I was able to identify the soldier who raped me. They also had DNA samples that proved he was the one who did this to me,” says the young woman.
Karina was present in court when the soldier was found guilty. However, the latter was convicted in absentia, meaning he is unlikely to ever end up behind bars.
The young woman has now taken control of her life. In particular, she married the love of her life in December and benefited from the advice of psychologists from the Andreiev Family Foundation for 20 months.
Karina now works as a case manager in the Andreiev Family Foundation’s Assisto project, where she helps survivors of sexual violence.