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Voice sometimes overwhelmed with emotion,
Elena
- her first name has been changed - still wants to speak.
She was singled out for the rancor of the Russian soldiers as the
wife of a Ukrainian soldier
, she was raped for hours by two of them, as she has recounted.
This testimony illustrates the fears of human rights organizations who point to evidence of the use of
rape as a "weapon of war"
in
Ukraine
.
Known in
Zaporizhia
, a city where thousands of displaced people thrown onto the roads by the Russian occupation of southern
Ukraine
flock every day , this woman came to wait for a bus to join her four children in
Vinnytsia
, in the center.
From the first day of the
invasion
, February 24, he sent them there, far from their home in the
Kherson
region (south), in the front line against the
invasion
.
Her husband, who has been fighting pro-Russian separatists in
Donbas
in eastern
Ukraine
for two years , sent to the front,
Elena
explains that she stayed there alone to evacuate their property.
But due to the danger of this journey and the presence of Russian soldiers, she could not find a vehicle to empty her house and that is where the tragedy occurred,
on the afternoon of April 3
, continues this mother.
"Around 3 p.m., I went to a grocery store. While I was queuing, Russian soldiers came in and started chatting with customers," says
Elena
.
"I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but I noticed one of the villagers pointing at me and saying 'she's a banderovka,'" she recalls.
The man was referring to those nostalgic for Ukrainian ultra-nationalist leader
Stepan Bandera
, who collaborated with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.
"'It is because of people like her that this war was unleashed,'" she added, according to her, "'she is the wife of a military officer'."
"Speechless"
"I understood that I was being watched, so I quickly left the store. As soon as I had time to enter my house, the two Russian soldiers came through the door behind me. I didn't have time to reach for my phone to ask for help or do anything.
Ellen
said
.
"Without saying a word, they threw me on the bed,
crushed me with a machine gun and stripped me naked
," the young woman said before breaking down in tears.
"They hardly spoke, except sometimes to call me 'banderovka' or say 'your turn.'
Elena
says she hasn't talked to anyone about it yet, not even a doctor or a psychologist, and especially her husband.
"I'm a midwife, I administered first aid myself," she says.
"I will find everything I need when I reach my destination,
I just want to find my children
."
Asked about her physical and mental state, she bursts into tears again: "I'm disgusted.
I don't want to live
anymore. "
green number
The Ukrainian section of the NGO La Strada, which defends women's rights, has so far received "calls on
seven cases of rape of Ukrainian women and children
by Russian occupiers" on its toll-free number, said an official of the organization, Aliona Kryvouliak.
But she expects much higher figures when the fear and shock of the victims begins to dissipate.
"There can be hundreds, even thousands, of women and girls raped
," said Aliona Kryvouliak.
The first call, on March 4, from Kherson, was about "the
gang rape of a mother and her 17-year-old daughter by three men
", the other cases were reported in the
Kiev
region "after March 12 March," he says.
outside.
"The Russian military has committed sexual violence against Ukrainian women and men, against children and the elderly," Ukraine
's Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova
said in a statement this week .
He insisted on the need to collect evidence, although he recognized the difficulty of collecting it in a country at war, in areas where mobile telephony or the electricity network are interrupted.
But it is undoubtedly a more expeditious justice than
Elena
imagines for her executioners and her accomplices.
"I am sure that
Ukraine
will take back these territories from Russian soldiers and that our soldiers will take revenge on them," she said.
"And I will not point fingers at these townspeople who have pointed fingers at me. I will point them at my husband," she promises herself, not revealing what the punishment would be in her eyes at the height of the crime. her.
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