Belarus Official Discusses Joint Troops With Russia

Russia Reportedly Used Rape As ‘Military Strategy’

A United Nations (UN) official said the organization has confirmed several reports of rape and other forms of sexual violence being used amid Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

Pramila Patten, a UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said during a Thursday interview with Agence France-Presse that “all the indications” were present that incidents of sexual violence by Russian troops in Ukraine were part of Russia’s “military strategy.” These incidents were used as a “deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims,” she said.

“When women are held for days and raped, when you start to rape little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations, when you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” she told AFP.

As of June 3, the UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said 124 alleged incidents of “conflict-related sexual violence” in Ukraine were reported to OHCHR officials since the start of the war in late February. Most of the reported incidents targeted women and girls, the human rights office said.

At a June meeting of the UN Security Council, the co-founder and director of strategic development for the Ukrainian Women’s Fund told officials that sexual violence was “the most hidden crime” of the war.

In late September, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission said it was tracking reports of conflict-related rapes, as well as “sexual violence used as torture or ill-treatment against men; forced public stripping – and other forms of sexual violence, such as forced nudity, unwanted sexual touching, sexual abuse and threats of sexual violence.”