In new allegations of abuse committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine has accused two Russian soldiers of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father.
According to Reuters, Ukrainian prosecution files revealed a spree of sex crimes committed by Russian soldiers of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade in four homes in the Brovary district near Kyiv in March 2022.
Soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, looting and using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to terrorize the population, according to Ukrainian prosecutors, during Moscow’s failed push to capture Kyiv following its February 24 invasion.
“They singled out the women ahead of time, coordinated their actions and roles,” said the prosecutors, who based their 2022 documents on interviews with witnesses and survivors.
The majority of the alleged atrocities occurred on March 13, when soldiers “in a state of alcoholic intoxication broke into the yard of a house where a young family lived,” according to prosecutors.
While his wife was gang raped, the father was beaten with a metal pot and forced to kneel. According to the documents, one of the soldiers allegedly told the four-year-old girl that he “will make her a woman” before abusing her.
Prosecutors claim that after the alleged attack on the girl and her parents, the two soldiers went next door and beat an elderly couple, as well as raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl.
Prosecutors said that at another location where several families lived, the soldiers forced everyone into the kitchen and gang raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother.
The Russian government, which claims to be fighting Western-backed “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, has denied allegations of atrocities on numerous occasions. It has also denied that its military commanders are aware of soldier sexual violence.
The soldiers were both snipers, aged 32 and 28, according to the files, with the former dying and the younger, named Yevgeniy Chernoknizhniy, returning to Russia.
According to Reuters, the two snipers were among six suspects charged in the Brovary assaults, which prosecutors say is one of the most extensive sexual abuse investigations since the invasion.
According to prosecutors, all of the victims survived and are receiving psychological and medical care.
