A report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documents 1,004 cases of sexual violence in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The cases involve victims aged between four and 82 and describe what the report calls a “shocking pattern of torture, intimidation and coercion.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was “deeply alarmed” by the prevalence of the abuses and warned that they were almost certainly continuing amid the ongoing violence. He said sexual violence was a grave feature of the attack against Ukraine and called for it to stop immediately, regardless of who committed the acts.
Russian troops accounted for 89% of the perpetrators in the cases covered. The report says men, especially those held in detention, make up most documented victims, while women and children have been most severely affected in occupied Ukrainian territory. Abuses against Ukrainian prisoners of war and detained medical workers included gang rape, genital mutilation and other forms of sexual humiliation.
The report identifies the use of a Soviet-era military field telephone, known as a “tapik”, to deliver electric shocks to the genitals as the most common single method recorded. It says 155 cases, or 27% of the total, involved that form of abuse at least once. Survivor accounts also describe assaults using objects including batons, cell-door keys and shovel handles.
The report attributes 11% of the cases to Ukrainian forces. Nearly half of those involved threats of sexual violence against Russian or other foreign prisoners of war, while the remaining cases included forced nudity, beatings and electric shocks to the genitals, sexually degrading treatment, sexual assault and attempted rape.
Russia was added to the UN secretary-general’s list of parties credibly suspected of conflict-related sexual violence in May. The Kremlin rejected the findings as politically motivated, while Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the report again demonstrated the scale of systematic violations attributed to Russia. The report draws on confidential interviews with hundreds of victims, court documents and official records.