At least nine Ukrainian women and girls are pregnant after Russian troops “systematically raped” them while they were hiding together in the besieged town of Bucha, reports say.
Russian soldiers assaulted 25 Ukrainians between the ages of 14 and 24 who were hiding in a basement in the Kyiv suburb, where hundreds of bodies were found strewn across the streets, according to the country’s human rights commissioner. Some of these attacks occurred in public as a warning to others, officials said.
“Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn’t want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children,” said Lyudmyla Denisova, a human rights official in Ukraine.
ZELENSKY BELIEVES ‘TENS OF THOUSANDS’ OF MARIUPOL RESIDENTS KILLED
Denisova described one case including a 25-year-old woman who said she watched Russians rape her 16-year-old sister in front of her on the streets as they screamed, “This will happen to every Nazi prostitute.”
The human rights advocate warned there may be more sexual assaults that have occurred in Ukraine since Russian troops have invaded, but the full extent may never be known, as “not everyone is willing to tell us what happened to them.”
“The majority of them currently call for psychological support, so we cannot record those as crimes unless they give us their testimony,” she said.
The first of the rape allegations emerged in a report published on April 3 by Human Rights Watch, which documented dozens of reports by officials and human rights workers in the country.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Kremlin has denied reports of targeted civilian attacks or war crimes, despite allegations from President Joe Biden earlier this week that Russia has committed genocide.
At least 1,842 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the Russian invasion began, with another 2,493 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
