People were shocked on Sunday by a photo taken by photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20 kilometers outside the capital, Kyiv, in which the bodies of a man and three women were stacked under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies were partially burned, the photographer said. The gruesome picture adds to a growing body of evidence that summary executions, rapes and torture of civilians have been used in Russian-controlled areas since the Kremlin launched an invasion of its neighbor on February 24. Particularly difficult for many to understand is the magnitude of sexual violence. As Russian troops have withdrawn from cities and suburbs around the capital to refocus fighting in eastern Ukraine, women and girls have appeared to tell police, media and human rights groups about the atrocities. suffered at the hands of Russian soldiers. Mass rapes, gun attacks and child rapes are among the bleak testimonies gathered by researchers. “We had many emergency calls on our hotline from women and girls asking for help, but in most cases it was impossible to help them physically. “We have not been able to reach them because of the fighting,” said Kateryna Cherepakha, president of La Strada Ukraine, a charity that supports survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. “Rape is an under-reported crime and a stigmatized issue even in peacetime. “I’m worried that what we are learning will be just the tip of the iceberg.” Rape and sexual assault are considered war crimes and a violation of international humanitarian law, and both the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the International Criminal Court have said they will launch an investigation into alleged sexual violence. But what now seems like a distant possibility of justice has done little to allay Ukrainian women ‘s fears about what might still happen in a war that is far from over. Antonina Medvedchuk, 31, said that when she awoke to the sound of bombing the day the war broke out, the first thing she grabbed before leaving Kyiv were condoms and scissors to use as a weapon to protect herself. “Every break between the curfew and the bombing, I was looking for emergency contraception instead of a basic first aid kit,” he said. “My mother tried to reassure me: ‘This is not a war, they do not exist anymore, they are from old movies.’ “I have been a feminist for eight years and I cried silently, because all wars are like that.” It is not just the Russian soldiers from whom the Ukrainians may have to protect themselves. In Vinicia, a town in the west of the country, a teacher told police that a member of the territorial defense services dragged her to the school library and tried to rape her. The man was arrested. Feminist organizations such as La Strada Ukraine and a nationwide network called Feminist Workshop work online and with the local government to distribute information on medical, legal and psychological support available to victims of sexual assault and to seek safe havens for women and girls flee both war and domestic violence. They fear, however, that the trauma caused by the use of rape as a military tactic will lead to deep suffering in Ukrainian society for years to come. “When a woman leaves she seems safe, she is far away from the guns and the man who raped her,” said Sasha Kancher, foreign affairs director for the Lviv Feminist Lab, which has helped hundreds of displaced women and girls. . since the war broke out. “But the trauma is a bomb inside her, which follows her. “The scale of what is happening now is heartbreaking.”
