Rape has reportedly become a weapon in Ukraine. Finding justice may be difficult
Editor's note: This report includes descriptions of sexual and physical violence.
Accounts of alleged sexual violence coming out of Ukraine in recent weeks have been grim. A woman raped repeatedly by a Russian soldier after her husband was killed outside Kyiv. A mother of four gang raped by Russian soldiers in Kherson. The body of a Ukrainian woman found dead — naked and branded with a swastika. A woman raped by a Russian commander on the day tanks entered the village of Kalyta.
The number of reports that have emerged since the start of the war in late February suggests that rape in Ukraine at the hands of Russian soldiers may be widespread. Those fears were further crystallized earlier this month following the Russian withdrawal from Bucha, a suburb of the capital Kyiv, where some two dozen women and girls were "systematically raped" by Russian forces, according to Ukraine's ombudswoman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova.
"What we've seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "It's a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to
