Ukrainian Women Are Beginning To Talk About Sexual Assault In The War
By Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko
Relatively few women in Ukraine have come forward to report cases of rape during the conflict because of the stigma attached to sexual assault in Ukrainian society, which is deeply religious and conservative, especially in rural areas. Prosecutors have registered more than 344 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, 220 of them women, including 16 underage women. But women’s groups estimate the real number runs into the thousands, with at least one case in almost every village that has been occupied by Russian troops...
Ms. Kovalenko was detained in an apartment and sexually assaulted by a Russian intelligence officer when covering the early conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 as a filmmaker. She was one of the first women in Ukraine to speak publicly and to rights organizations about her ordeal. “Compared to 2019, it is a revolution that women are speaking out now,” she said. “It’s a real revolution when a woman like Mefodiivna speaks out, and Tetyana.”
https://www.lucorg.com/slowly-ukrainian-women-are-beginning-to-talk-about-sexual-assault-in-the-war/
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/slowly-ukrainian-women-are-beginning-to-talk-about-sexual-assault-in-the-war