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Maria Mezentseva, the head of Ukraine’s delegation to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, has claimed that Russian soldiers raped and sexually assaulted women.
During an interview with Sky News, she said ”There is one case which was very widely discussed recently because it’s been recorded and proceeded with [by] the prosecutor’s office, and we’re not going into details, but it’s quite a scary scene when a civilian was shot dead in his house in a small town next to Kyiv.”
“His wife was, I’m sorry but I have to say it, raped several times in front of her underage child.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova opened the country’s first official rape investigation into the case after the drunken soldier is said to have broken into the family’s home, killed the husband and then repeatedly raped his wife.
“There are many more victims rather than just this one case which has been made public by the prosecutor general,” Mezentseva said. “And of course, we are expecting many more of them, which will be public once victims will be ready to talk about that.
“That’s why you know, when we’ve been talking to Boris Johnson, when we will be talking to your Home Office, when we’ve been talking to MPs of UK, we’ve also raised this issue that this aftermath, which we are dealing with right now, the aftermath of war, has to be taken very cautiously, very seriously, and to take into account the UK experience and experience of other countries, which can help us in dealing with psychologists, and how to help these people to actually live over these cases, to keep going afterwards, to keep living.”
“We will definitely not be silent,” she added.
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”Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one responsible for this humiliation, war crimes, and disasters,” said the Ukraine MP emphasising the bombing of foreign nationals, children, and women.
Anastasia Taran, a 30-year-old from Enerhodar who was working as a waitress in Irpin prior to the Russian invasion, claimed that conditions in the Russian-occupied town are like ‘hell’ and alleged the invaders engaged in horrific treatment of locals.
”Irpin is Hell. There are plenty of Russian soldiers out there who just shoot people who enter private homes and, at best, just kick people out of their homes,” Anastasia told Ukrainian outlet Euromaidan Press.
”They rape women and the dead are just being dumped.”
About 20,000 Ukrainians have been killed in Russia’s month-old invasion and 10 million have fled their homes, according to Kyiv, and several cities are still coming under withering bombardment.
Humanitarian needs are direst in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine said that about 160,000 civilians remain encircled by Russian forces, desperate for food, water and medicine.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the situation there was “catastrophic” and Russia’s assault from land, sea and air had turned a city once home to 450,000 people “into dust”.
The Ukrainian government also estimated Monday that the economic damage from the Russian invasion had reached nearly $565 billion.
(With inputs from agencies)
