Women across Ukraine grapple with the threat of rape as a weapon of war as growing evidence of sexual violence emerges in areas retaken by retreating Russian forces.
The world was horrified on Sunday by a picture taken by photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20km outside the capital Kyiv showing the bodies of a man and three women piled under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies were partially burned, the photographer said.
The harrowing image adds to a mounting body of evidence that civilians in areas under Russian control have been summarily executed, raped and tortured since the Kremlin began invading its neighbor on February 24.
The extent of sexual violence is particularly difficult for many to understand. As Russian troops have withdrawn from towns and suburbs around the capital to refocus the war effort on eastern Ukraine, women and girls have come forward to tell police, the media and human rights organizations about the atrocities they are committing suffered by Russian soldiers. Mass rapes, gunpoint assaults and rapes in front of children are among the grim testimonies gathered by investigators.
“We have received several calls to our emergency number from women and girls seeking help, but in most cases it has been impossible to physically help them. We couldn’t reach them because of the fighting,” said Kateryna Cherepakha, the president of La Strada Ukraine, a charity that supports survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault.
“Rape is an underreported crime and a stigmatized issue, even in peaceful times. I worry that what we learn about will only be the tip of the iceberg.”
Rape and sexual assault are considered war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, and both the Attorney General of Ukraine and the International Criminal Court have announced they will open investigations into reported sexual violence. But what currently seems like a distant possibility of justice has done little to allay Ukrainian women’s fears of what may yet happen in a war that is far from over.
Antonina Medvedchuk, 31, said that when she woke up to the sound of bombs on the day war broke out, the first thing she did before leaving Kyiv was to grab condoms and scissors to protect herself as a weapon.
“In every lull between lockdown and bombing, I looked for emergency contraception rather than a simple first-aid kit,” she said. “My mother tried to calm me down: ‘This isn’t a war like this, they don’t exist anymore, they’re from old movies.’ I’ve been a feminist for eight years and I’ve cried to myself because all wars are like that.”
It’s not just Russian soldiers that Ukrainian women may need to protect themselves from. In Vinnytsia, a city in the west of the country, a teacher reported to the police that a member of the Territorial Defense Service dragged her into the school library and tried to rape her. The man was arrested.
Organizations such as La Strada Ukraine and a nationwide network called Feminist Workshop have been working online and with local government to disseminate information about medical, legal and psychological support for victims of sexual assault and are trying to provide safe shelters for women and girls on the run find Both war and domestic violence.
However, they fear that the trauma caused by the use of rape as a military tactic will cause deep suffering in Ukrainian society for years to come.
“When a woman escapes, it looks like she’s safe, she’s far from the guns and the man who raped her,” said Sasha Kantser, director of foreign affairs for the Lviv chapter of the Feminist Workshop. who has helped hundreds of displaced women and girls since the outbreak of war.
“But the trauma is a bomb inside her that follows her. The scale of what is happening now is heartbreaking.”