“I Don’t Want to Live!”

[David Morris]

https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/12/i-don-t-want-to-live-woman-says-russian-troops-raped-her-in-kherson

UKRAINE <https://www.euronews.com/news/europe/ukraine>
'I don't want to live': Woman says Russian troops raped her in Kherson


*Her harrowing case is one of a growing number of accusations of rape
against Russian soldiers in Ukraine.Elena, whose name has been changed to
protect her identity, told AFP news agency it happened in the city of
Kherson on 3 April.The mother-of-four was living alone. Her husband, a
Ukrainian soldier, was fighting in Donbas, while her children had been sent
to the west of Ukraine earlier in the war.She said a customer in a grocery
store had pointed her out to Russian soldiers, telling them she was a
soldier’s wife and accused her of being a supporter of Stepan Bandera, an
ultranationalist leader and Nazi collaborator against the Soviet Union.She
said she left the store but the soldiers followed her home, forced her to
take her clothes off and pinned her down.*
*"There could be hundreds, even thousands, of assaulted women and girls,"
Aliona Kryvouliak of Women’s Rights NGO La Strada’s Ukrainian section told
AFP.*

She said the NGO’s first testimony was taken on 4 March. A mother and her
17-year-old daughter were raped by three men in Kherson. Other cases have
been reported from the Kyiv region.

Both Ukraine’s prosecutor general and the International Criminal Court in
The Hague have said they will open investigations into reported sexual
violence.

UN officials have meanwhile called for more protection for women as more
stories of gang rapes, assaults at gunpoint and sexual violence in front of
children were collected by investigators.

“The combination of mass displacement with the large presence of conscripts
and mercenaries, and the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians,
has raised all red flags,” said Sima Bahous, the executive director of the
United Nations' Women entity.