Daria Zymenko was taken to an abandoned house and raped by drunken Russian soldiers.
Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of women are believed to have been subjected to sexual violence during the war in Ukraine. Many suppress their traumas. Others speak out in the hope of breaking the stigma.
The soldiers are drunk and boisterous when they break in in March 2022. Daria Zymenko is told to follow them for questioning, they say. Her parents, whom she had fled to when the fighting approached Kiev, beg the Russians in vain to spare their daughter.
When Zymenko is forced at gunpoint to go to an abandoned house and is asked to undress, she realizes it will not be an interrogation.
What happens next is not unique. According to Ukrainian authorities, sexual violence is a systematic part of the Russian warfare.
It lasted for two hours, says the 33-year-old during a press conference in Paris, according to the news agency AFP.
"Not just statistics"
The day after, it happens again. Shortly after, the Ukrainian forces manage to retake the village of Havronshtjyna.
At first, Daria Zymenko does not tell anyone about the rapes. She wants to suppress it – but when she is repeatedly plagued by anxiety attacks, she begins to talk.
I want the whole world to know. I want them to see me as a human being and not just a statistic, she says during the press conference with the organization Sema, which brings together women who have been subjected to sexual violence during the war.
I want to break the taboo and prevent victims from being stigmatized.
Raped by commanders
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, over 300 cases of sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers have been registered. The dark figure is believed to be large, not least due to the widespread stigma.
Documentary filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko estimates that around 80 percent of Ukraine's female victims of sexual violence do not dare to speak out.
But the 20 percent who do make up a revolution, she says in Paris, according to AFP.
Kovalenko was subjected to sexual abuse during her work on the film "Alisa in Warland" in Donetsk in 2014. For several days, she was held captive and repeatedly raped by a Russian commander.
Takes Viagra
Even she has had a hard time talking about the abuse, but does so in the hope of strengthening others and lifting the taboo. Even today, she has nightmares.
You can't heal after such an experience. You can only feel better, she says.
Already in the months following the invasion in 2022, the UN envoy Pramila Patten warned that Russia is using rape as a weapon. Women are being held captive and raped for days, she reported. Since then, several studies have come to the same conclusion.
When you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it is clear that it is a military strategy, Patten told AFP.
Sexual violence in conflicts is an ancient phenomenon, but is believed to have been used systematically for the first time during World War II. The number of raped women and children is estimated to be around two million. Of these, around 240,000 are estimated to have died as a result of their injuries. Many were raped 70-80 times.
During the 1990s, research on the subject increased in connection with the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda, where up to half a million women and girls are estimated to have been raped. In 1998, rape was defined for the first time as a "crime against humanity" by the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.
It was not until the UN resolution 1820 in 2008 that rape was recognized as a war crime.
Earlier in June, a Ukrainian national register was established to document sexual violence committed by Russian forces during the full-scale invasion. As of June 19, 303 cases of conflict-related sexual violence had been registered, 191 of them against women. The dark figure is believed to be very large.
Sources: UN, AP.
