Sexual violence against men in the occupied territories of Ukraine has become the norm in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - SNN

It is reported that the residents of the occupied regions of Ukraine and prisoners of war are reported to be sexually violence. About it writes SNN in the last annual report of the UN Security Council on the Sexual Violence related to conflict, it is said that in 2023, 85 cases were registered in Ukraine, which were injured in 52 men, 31 women, one girl and one boy.

A separate report of UN Human Rights, according to a survey of 60 Ukrainian prisoners of war after their release, found that 39 of them were victims of sexual abuse during detention in Russia. Only some men have publicly told that they have experienced, but Ukrainian prosecutors and human rights organizations say that male victims are a growing share of cases. Crimes often go unnoticed because of their related stigmatization and shame.

CNN interfered with four survivors, two personally and two by phone, and received testimony from two more, which was kept by Russian units in five Ukrainian regions occupied or annexed by Russia: Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kharkiv and Crimea. They all told that they were subjected to forced nudity, torture the genitals with electric current (most often with wires from the Soviet military field field phone and 57, known as "Tapik") and rape threats.

So, a resident of Kherson Roman Shapovalenko said that three armed staff of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia in masks burst into him into a house with a search on August 25, 2022, when Kherson was occupied. The reason for the search was a message in Roman's phone, where he called Russian soldiers "orcs". The novel said he was tied, his eyes tied and pushed into a car without distinctive signs.

Within a few days, he was repeatedly beaten in the genital area, threatened with a glass bottle rape and even forced to believe that it could be sterilized. "It seems they had a fetish at the genitals. Sometimes the door opened, and they said," We are going to take out the sticks and rape everyone here, "Shapovalenko said. Roman Chernenko, 29-year ", he said that he was tortured three times a day, daily for four months.

He spent seven months in a prison in the occupied city of Olenivka in the east of Donetsk region after he was captured by Russian troops in the Mariupol region. In his opinion, the torture was involved in the Russian GRU, the Federal Sentence Service (FSVP) and the FSB, the Main Intelligence Administration of Russia. A few weeks after his liberation, on the day he declared to his girlfriend, he said that his thoughts about her and his mother gave him the strength to endure captivity. Chechen rape.

I was driven twice, threatened with rape, "he said. Rape and sexual abuse is directly prohibited by Geneva Conventions - the erection of international laws governing armed conflict - and may be a military crime. . Together, their stories reflect what prosecutors are called systematic and continuing the use of sexual violence in the occupied territories in the framework of their efforts with the coercion of the Ukrainian people to subordinate.

They use the same method of committing sexual abuse, the same method of humiliation, the same method as they explain it to their victims, "said Anna Sosonskaya, prosecutor of the Attorney General's office, acting as head of sexual violence. Sosona stated that a significant number of documented sexual violence crimes by Russian servicemen, including forced exposure, genital surgery, rape, and forced sexual abuse against others, is happening to men. The first place in the list, "she said.

According to Ukrainian prosecutors who investigate sexual violence and violence in conflict, all available evidence indicates that it is intentional tactics, part of the mode of action of Russia in Ukraine. " It happened in every region , which was under occupation. Everywhere where Russian troops were, we see cases of sexual and gender violence. The bottom line seems to be Russian policy, "Sosonskaya said.

As of early May, 293 cases of sexual violence have been officially recorded in Ukraine, but Sosona stated that it is impossible to evaluate the real number of crimes committed, especially in the occupied territories that remain unavailable For Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors. Not to realize that what happened to them was a crime related to sexual violence. Everything is managed by the campaign of torture and sexual abuse against the Ukrainian people.

The SBU and the Ukrainian Regional Prosecutor's Office in Kherson were named Alexander Naumenko, Deputy Head of Rosgvardia in the Rostov region, suspected of more than ten cases. Last May, the Ukrainian authorities stated that he was responsible for supervising the detention center in Kherson during the occupation and that he personally ordered the sexual torture of several casualties.

Two other Rosgvardia staff - Alexander Chilengirov and Yegor Bondarenkov - are also accused of torture, in particular, at least 24 victims of Kherson's other victims of at least 24 casualties. The employee of the Department for the Protection of the Constitutional order and the fight against the terrorism of the FSB Dmitry Laykov is accused of guidance by genital execution on the electric chair of the detained citizen of Ukraine in the police department in the occupied city of Nova Kakhovka.

According to Kherson's prosecutor's office, all four men have been charged, and their cases are currently being considered in court. Their location is unknown. CNN appealed to the Ministry of Defense of Russia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the National Guard (Rosgvardi) and a military intelligence agency known as the game, for comments on the statements about sexual abuse in specific places of detention, but did not receive any response.