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Another official is sounding the alarm on alleged rapes and attacks of Ukrainian women at the hands of Russian soldiers.
Maria Mezentseva, a Ukrainian MP, said in a television interview over the weekend that Russian soldiers have been raping and sexually assaulting women since the invasion of Ukraine began in late February.
According to The Guardian, Mezentseva referenced an alleged case of a woman being raped in front of her child in a suburb of Kyiv.
“There is one case which was very widely discussed recently because it’s been recorded and proceeded with (by) the prosecutor’s office, and we’re not going into details, but it’s quite a scary scene when a civilian was shot dead in his house in a small town next to Kyiv,” she told Sky News on Sunday.
“His wife was — I’m sorry but I have to say it — raped several times in front of her underage child.”
She told Sky News she was speaking on the incident to ensure the case would be on the public record because “justice has to prevail.”
“There are many more victims rather than just this one case which has been made public by the prosecutor general,” she said. “And of course, we are expecting many more of them, which will be public once victims will be ready to talk about that.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Iryna Venediktova, referenced the same alleged attack in a Facebook post on March 22.
“In one of the villages of Brovarsky district, this man broke into a private house and shot the owner. After that, a drunk occupant and his co-worker repeatedly raped the wife of a murdered civilian, threatening her with violence and weapons. Even threatened her minor child who was with the victim,” she wrote at the time.
Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun tweeted on the same day that the woman involved had filed a formal complaint.
Mezentseva’s comments follow similar allegations made by fellow Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, who told U.K. MPs earlier in March that Russian soldiers were assaulting and raping women over the age of 60.
She said: “We have reports of women being gang-raped. These women are usually the ones who are unable to get out. We are talking about senior citizens. Most of these women have either been executed after the crime of rape or they have taken their own lives.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has also claimed that Russian soldiers were responsible for rape on Ukrainian soil.
“When bombs fall on your cities, when soldiers rape women in the occupied cities — and we have numerous cases of, unfortunately, when Russian soldiers rape women in Ukrainian cities — it’s difficult, of course, to speak about the efficiency of international law,” Kuleba told London-based think-tank in early March, reports Reuters.
He did not give any evidence for his claims, and it appears Russia has not addressed any of the claims of rape or sexual assault since the war began.
“This is the only tool of civilization that is available to us to make sure that eventually all those who made this war possible will be brought to justice,” said Kuleba at the time.
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