Russian forces committed widespread sexual violence against civilians and prisoners of war in Ukraine, including gang rape and electric shocks to the genitals, while Ukrainian authorities were also responsible for a smaller number of violations, the UN human rights office said in a report on Friday.
The statement did not comment directly on the findings of incidents of abuse by Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement it welcomed the publication of the report, which it said showed the scale of the human rights violations perpetrated by Russia and the measures being taken by Ukraine to prevent such violence and compensate victims. It said Russia’s refusal to grant the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights access to occupied Ukrainian territory, prisoners of war and civilian detainees meant the figures likely underestimate the true scale of the violations. In occupied areas of Ukraine and within Russia, Russian authorities carried out sexual violence against Ukrainian prisoners of war and detained civilians at all stages of captivity, including during capture, transfer, interrogation and detention, the report said. “Sexual violence in conflict is often misunderstood to be mainly affecting women and girls, where in the Ukraine war context, the majority of survivors are men,” Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said. “And men and women require different solutions and approaches to their recovery,” she said.
In Ukrainian government-controlled territory, nearly half of the violations attributed to Ukrainian authorities against Russian and third-country prisoners of war and detainees involved threats of sexual violence and beatings to genitals.
