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12th April 2022
03:53pm BST
A protest in Poland/Via Getty[/caption]
Speaking to the United Nations on April 12, Kateryna Cherepakha, president of La Strada-Ukraine, said her group's hotlines have been ringing non-stop with reports of sexual assault.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," she told officials. "We know and see - and we want you to hear our voices - that violence and rape is used now as a weapon of war by Russian invaders in Ukraine."
The BBC on Monday told the story of 50-year-old 'Anna' (not her real name), who said she was attacked by Russian soldiers who stormed her home on March 7. After a soldier described as "young" and "thin" raped her, she found her husband left for dead with a bullet wound in his abdomen. He died two days later.
Anastasiia Lapatina from the Kyiv Independent obtained an intercepted phone conversation between a Russian soldier and his wife.
"I really thought I've seen the worst of it," she wrote on Twitter. "But I just heard an intercepted call of a Russian woman telling her partner to rape Ukrainian women, just not tell her about it. "I allow it, just use protection". What the actual fuck."
https://twitter.com/lapatina_/status/1513871330919292935
According to other reports, another woman, 83-year-old Vera, is believed to have been raped while her disabled husband was powerless to stop it.
"I told the one who raped me, 'I'm old enough to be your mother. Would you let this happen to your mother?'" she told CBS. "He made me shut up." The news station also learned of a 16-year-old girl in the same village who had also been raped.
"He should have shot me," Vera added. "I wish he had killed me instead of what he did."
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1512498956365877255
Last week, reports of body mutilation came from Ukrainian politician Lesia Vasylenko.
She shared a pictured of what she said was the "tortured body of a raped and killed woman". A swastika was branded into the dead woman's chest.
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