Trouble without limitation. How in Ukraine investigate military crimes and where to seek assistance to victims of violence by the occupiers

Who and how they are investigating and why this work can last for decades, has been investigated by a reporter of NV Sasha Gorchinskaya. Torture and rape 22-year-old Karina Ershov died during the occupation of Bucha in March 2022. Russian soldiers released an automatic queue into Karina and shot. Karina's stepfather, Andriy Denko, told The Telegraph that the girl was shot dead, and the traces on the body indicate that she tried to resist her abusers.

The fact that Karina survived torture is also noted in the Buchansk City Council: it is known that her hands were lacking nails, the fingers were burned to the bones, and a harness was applied on his leg, probably to stop bleeding from a gunshot wound. Karina's body was thrown into the mass grave in the courtyard of the local church together with four hundred other victims. Only after 33 days of occupation did the family be able to bury their daughter.

Karina is only one of the numerous victims of Russian invaders. The reports of rape, torture and murders, according to the media and state structures, are coming from different settlements of Ukraine. For example, this is the story of a 19-year-old resident of Mariupol Catherine-she told The Washington Post that she survived sexual violence by Russian invaders, hiding in the basement of one of the houses in March 2022. She did not file a crime.

The stories about the atrocities of Russian invaders in the Kyiv region were also documented by the Air Force journalists: one of the subjects mentioned at once a few women who were injured in sexual violence during Bucha and Irpen's occupation. The report on Ukraine, which presented the Office of the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights on June 29, 2022, says that most of the victims of sexual crimes are women and children.

“Rape, including group women, as argued, was the most common form of sexual crimes committed by the Russian Armed Forces. This was often accompanied by other human rights violations, such as the premeditated murder of victims or their men, physical violence or robbery of their homes, ”the report said.

As of May 15, 2022, UHRC was known about 108 applications for war crimes against women, girls, men and boys, who, as reported in the report, took place in regions such as: Chernihiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv region and others, as well as in the pre -trial detention center in the Russian Federation.

"In total, 78 statements submitted on rape, including group, 7 attempts for rape, 15 cases of forced public undress and 8 other forms of sexual abuse, such as sexualization, torture, unwanted sexual touches and threats of sexual violence, - reports. In the UN report. - Women and girls among the victims are the majority. 59 cases relate to crimes committed in the territory of the Kyiv region. In 18 cases, the victims were killed or died after rape.

For example, a man in the Chernihiv region reported that he had found the body of an elderly woman - half naked, and there was blood around her genitals. " Crimes without the limitation period of the norm of international law, such as the Geneva Convention, the Roman Statute and the Statute of the Nuremberg Tribunal, define war crimes as "violation of the laws and customs of war. " And sexual violence in a military context is only one of them.

"Military crimes are mostly ill -treatment of the civilian population, violation of the Geneva Convention, that is, a situation where civilians should not suffer during military conflicts," - makes this term a deputy, deputy chairman Delegations to the OSCE Eugene Kravchuk. Together with colleagues, she lobbies the adoption of relevant rules that will enhance the responsibility of the Russian Federation for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Military crimes also include: premeditated murders or injuries of civilians, torture and torture, forced deportation, hostage, biological experiments, looting, deliberate attacks on civil infrastructure, refusal or deprivation and other. “These crimes are motivated by hatred of Ukraine and Ukrainians. It is an element of the genocide of the Ukrainian people. As for sexual abuse, even if peaceful, we see that most of the victims are women.

During the war, the number of such crimes increases in geometric progression. If it is a Ukrainian woman, she falls under double risk, ”the lawyer Natalia Tselovnichenko said in a comment. Such crimes are motivated, above all, by the desire of the occupiers to demonstrate their power, she believes. One of the features of war crimes is that they do not have a limitation period.

From this it follows that when fixing crimes such as sexual violence, they are based, first of all, on the oral testimony of the victims. While documenting and investigating rape in context outside war, in fact, is not possible without providing other evidence, such as forensic examinations. “I think that we will not explore what has happened and establish justice. But it is really necessary, ”says Natalia Tselovnichenko.

Torture may also be considered to be compulsory to monitoring physical or sexual abuse, abuse against others, explains in the commentary of HB Galina Skipalskaya, IBF Executive Director Ukrainian Public Health Foundation, Director of Representation in Ukraine MO Healthith International. Experts emphasize that it is even difficult for us to imagine all the extent of the problem, because we do not know what is really going on in the occupied territories.

They are not ready to talk about their difficult experience and those who managed to get out of these territories: someone - because of the fear of condemnation, someone - because they do not believe that the perpetrators will be punished. “People do not want to talk about situations where, for example, a rocket fell and as a result, the house burned down. One of the reasons is afraid that they will be of great interest. What to say about sexual crimes, - explains Galina Skipalskaya.

- It's all a very long process. Just four months passed. This is not enough for women to start talking. We will see the real picture in a year, two or more. " The process of fixing war crimes also has its own peculiarities. For the convenience and unification of this process, the international human rights community proposes to use special protocols, the so -called Berkeley protocol to document war crimes.

Another document is an international protocol for documenting and investigating sexual abuse in conflict. Who and how the war crimes are investigating the national police is one of the structures that are directly involved in the investigation of war crimes committed during the Russian-Ukrainian war, including crimes against women, in Ukraine.

After the full -scale invasion of the Russian Federation on the initiative of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Kateryna Levchenko in several regions of Ukraine there are special groups that are focused on crimes of this nature. They go to cities and villages that have been occupied and communicated with locals.

The group must be a psychologist, says NV Yevgeny Mamushkin, police captain, chief specialist of combating domestic violence and trafficking in human beings of the Department of Human Rights of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He participated in several such visits: in Kyiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions. "During the departures, we noticed some specificity: the nature of the crimes committed by the occupiers changed, depending on how far they moved from the border," says Yevgeny Mamushkin.

-In the border areas, property crimes, such as the abduction of personal property of people, also beatings and torture, were most often taken place. But there were no mass shootings and sexual abuse on a large scale. The closer to Kiev, the more we recorded cases of rape women and girls. Instead, Sumy region also has evidence of missing women, but no bodies were discovered.

” In addition to rapes, the special group also has cases of forced exposure of women by occupiers, coercion to the demonstration of the genitals and various parts of the body allegedly for the purpose of detecting tattoos. There were also cases of corruption of minors, including when, in fact, the sexual act was not discussed. Yevgeny Mamushkin notes that the victims of the Russian Federation of women-very different ages, and adds that among the eldest victims were persons aged 80.

In some villages, sabotage and intelligence groups acted on the following principle: pre-found in which houses only women and children live, and recorded these yards as such, where the locals would resist the slightest resistance in the event of the invaders. “If there is information that a woman who stands in front of me can be affected by sexual violence, my female colleagues are immediately included here.

As a result of such traumatic events, some women have a psychological trauma - the perception of men in general changes. So we try to do everything to avoid the risks of re -traumatization, ”Yevgeny Mamushkin tells about the peculiarities of communication with the victims. In total, nearly 23 thousand criminal proceedings were opened on the commission of war crimes in Ukraine, said in a comment, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Kateryna Pavlichenko.

Dozens of cases included in the Unified Register of Pre -trial Investigations relate to sexual abuse. 21 This case was started by the National Police, the rest - started by other structures, in particular, the SBU and the prosecutor's office. In response to a request from the Security Service of Ukraine, as of July 20, 2022, the SBU investigators were undergoing a pre -trial investigation in 21 criminal proceedings on the facts of rape of civilians.

Two servicemen of the Russian Federation were notified of suspicion of a crime. "Everyone repeats as a mantra:" I want to be left alone, I want to forget about it. " But these are not cases where the injured party can cope with the surviving independently. In order to work out the injury, consultations of specialists are needed. The option "I will work - I will be distracted and about all the forget" in such cases is not effective, " - explains Yevgeny Mamushkin.

Some of the war crimes are also the jurisdiction of other structures - for example, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Prosecutor's Office. Prosecutors of the Kyiv region, for example, are currently carrying out procedural guidance in criminal proceedings on the rape of Ukrainian women by Russian servicemen. In response, two such cases were reported in the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor's Office. The first is the indictment under Part 2 of Art.

438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine regarding the Russian serviceman who killed the owner of one of the houses in the Brovarsky district, and repeatedly raped his wife with his co -serviceman. The second case is a suspicion of a crime, provided for in Part 1 of Art. 438 of the Criminal Code: The suspect went to one of the private homes, closed all those present except one woman in the basement, and raped her. At the moment, this case is underway for pre -trial investigation.

We have about 20 thousand clients as of today. These are all who have suffered through the war: for example, women with children who were traveling under fire, have experienced violence and torture. Our key goal is to help those who have suffered to find the resource to cope with the situation. As for those who have suffered from sex crimes, such clients are 16, including one child. There were appeals about four other cases, but they were not confirmed, ”Galina Skipalskaya says in an interview.

The Ukrainian Public Health Foundation has been specializing in assistance to various types of vulnerable groups of the population since 2008. Since 2014, the Foundation began to assist persons released from captivity, and since 2015-women who survived sexual abuse. Today, the organization provides psychological, social and legal assistance to women with children affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The team employs more than 300 psychologists, social workers and nurses who specialize, in particular, in sexual crimes. There is also a safewmenhub online platform where anyone or anyone who needs help can go. Legal support is provided by the Lawyer of the Lawyer. As of today, there is also a great need to open special shelters - shelters, where people who have left the temporarily occupied territories or from the war zone can receive comprehensive assistance.

One of these shelters - the Savior Assistance Center - opened in Zaporozhye on July 1, 2022. "If you write in the center, conditionally" for the raped during the war ", you can only make it worse. It is immediately stigmatization, shame, people do not want to talk about it. Therefore, the best practice is the general center of assistance for those who suffered from the war, ” - explains the name of the deputy Yevgeny Kravchuk. She adds that Zaporozhye was not accidentally chosen.

This city became a humanitarian hub for those who left Mariupol, occupied part of the Zaporozhye, Donetsk regions. Similar centers should be opened in two more cities - in Lviv and Kiev. Another tool is Aurora's online platform, through which the victims can receive psychological help. “Online platforms are very important if we are talking, in particular, about forced displaced persons that are now abroad.

Often, they do not know a foreign language that becomes a obstacle, because there is a need for specialists who speak Ukrainian or Russian, ”explains Yevgeny Kravchuk. Another important issue is compensation from the state for the victims of such crimes. These compensations should be of various kinds, the People's Deputy notes.

As an example, she cites the history of Iraqi human rights activist Nadiya Murad - when her village was captured by the Islamists, hope was taken out with a group of young women and recruited into sexual slavery several times. After escaping from captivity, Nadezhda Murad founded her own assistance fund for victims of violence, first and foremost during wars. “It is obvious that such women need not only physical and psychological but also economic support.

For example, if a woman was raped in her home for two weeks, it is obvious that she does not want to live there, - says Yevgeny Kravchuk. - In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the state assisted such a victim of ten years after the conflict and paid them money. It would be right that money from the frozen assets of the oligarchs and sub -persons of the Russian Federation be used not only for the rebuilding of our infrastructure, but also for compensation for the victims.

" Galina Skipalskaya reminds that this story - for many years. Traumatic experience experienced during the war will have an impact on Ukrainian women in the long run: how these women will treat sex, marital relationships and relationships in general, whether they want to have children, etc. , she says.

The expert is based on the experience of Balkan countries, as well as the Ukrainian experience of 2014-2015: “In those years, there were cases of rape of Russian military military, which regularly traveled to temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories. Our clients began to talk about it in about two to three years, addressing completely different problems, including health problems. And later it turned out that this problem existed three years ago.

Military crimes do not have a limitation period, - says Galina Skipalskaya. - With each new challenge, whether personal problems in the family, or whether any changes in the country, people who have experienced such serious injuries will reject back. Again, they will need help - even those who seemed to have coped with it.