The dramatic testimony that reveals another war crime in Ukraine: “Russian soldiers raped me while my son was crying in terror”

A Ukrainian woman decided to tell the story of how Russian soldiers who invaded her home, shot and raped her husband repeatedly for several hours on March 9, in testimony that could be the first evidence in the war crimes case against Russia before the International Criminal Court.

Natalya, 33, told her story to the British newspaper The Times. He said he made the decision to dispel rumors that reports of rape by Russian soldiers were too shocking to be true.

Natalya and her husband, Andrey, 35, lived in a small village near the village of Shevchenkove in the Brovary district, on the outskirts of Kiev, where the couple decided to build their first house near a pine forest. The couple had a 4-year-old son, named Oleskii. They are not his real names, they are the ones he has chosen to tell the story

“We were planning a child and dreaming of our first home,” she recalled in a conversation with the British newspaper from Ternopil, the city where she is now a refugee. “We wanted to live closer to nature, that's why we didn't live in the city. My husband put his heart and soul into the construction of the house and everything was made of natural wood and stone. We even used to go to the forest to pick up the garbage that other people had left behind.”

Brovary was one of the first battlegrounds for Russian troops seeking to storm the capital, Kiev. On March 8, after learning that the Russians had entered the village, the couple hung a white sheet on the door “to show that there is only one family here and no one wants to hurt,” he said.

The next morning, they heard a single gunshot outside the house and the sound of the door breaking. As they left the house with their hands up, they saw a group of soldiers, one with his rifle still pointing at his dog lying dead in the yard. “They said they didn't know there were people here, that they didn't intend to hurt,” Natalya said. “All the usual tales, 'we thought we were going to train, we didn't know they would send us to war. '”

The soldiers then went to get petrol for a quad bike that had been stolen from their neighbors. The commander leered at Natalya, introducing himself as Mikhail Romanov, saying that if there was no war, they would surely have an affair.

“There was another guy named Vitaly who apologized for the dog. He said that in his hometown he and his wife were dog breeders,” Natalya said. “Mikhail at the time seemed a little drunk. I asked them to leave, because my son was scared, he's only four years old. I said, 'You can leave, they've searched the house and now they're just scaring him. '”

Natalya recalled that commander became aggressive when she saw a camouflage jacket in her husband's car and opened fire, firing it, before threatening to blow up Natalya's car with a grenade. She begged him to leave it for emergencies, but he snatched her keys, accelerated the engine and smashed it into the trunk of a fallen tree before abandoning it and leaving. After dark, they heard a shock at the door and Andrey went out to see what was going on, leaving the door open.

“I heard a single shot, the sound of the door opening, and then the sound of footsteps in the house,” Natalya said. It was Romanov, who had returned with a different man in his twenties, dressed in a black uniform “I shouted, where is my husband? Then I looked outside and saw him on the floor by the door. This young man pointed a gun at my head and said, 'I shot your husband because he is a Nazi. '”

Natalya called her son to stay in the boiler room where they had been sheltering from the bombing. “He said 'you'd better shut up or I'll bring your son and show him his mother's brains scattered around the house, '” he recalled. “He told me to take off my clothes. Then they both raped me one after another. They didn't care that my son was crying in the boiler room. They told me to shut him up and come back. The whole time they held the gun next to my head and mocked me, saying 'how do you think he sucks it? Do we kill her or keep her alive? '” .

After a while, the men left and she went with her son Oleksii, who was paralyzed by fear and refused to move. Approximately 20 minutes later, they returned and raped her again before tripping. “When they came back for the third time, they were so drunk that they were barely standing,” Natalya said. “Eventually, they both fell asleep on the chairs. I sneaked into the boiler room and told my son that we have to run too fast or they'll shoot us.”

His son followed him quietly to the courtyard. “As I opened the door, my son was standing next to his father's body, but it was dark and he didn't understand that it was his father. He said 'will they shoot us the same as this man here? '” , remember.

Natalya and Oleksii escaped through the fields to a neighbor's house and then to Brovary the next day, and then to the western province of Lviv. Natalya was never able to break the news of her father's murder to her son. In Brovary she stayed with her in-laws, who sent her to a village on the outskirts of Ternopil where her husband's sister had already been evacuated with her children. It was she who urged Natalya to report her rape and the murder of her husband to the police.

“I could have stayed quiet, but when we got to the police, my husband's sister made me talk and there was no going back,” she said. “I understand that many people who have been hurt stay quiet because they are afraid. A lot of people don't think terrible things like this happen. One of the women I met later sent a message to the village group and people said 'stop making up stories'.”

Natalya even identified Romanov on social media profiles and later learned that he was accused of multiple rapes. She doesn't know the identity of the second rapist, only that she is the only victim who could identify him. Last week she was contacted to be told that a man believed to be Romanov had been killed by Ukrainian forces in Brovary, “but I'm still not sure if it's true.”

The mejer said that when she takes her son to Oleksii to the playground, he tells the other children: “'My favorite dog was murdered'. He doesn't know anything about his dad. Even if we go to the store, he asks me to buy a donut for him. 'Buy a donut for dad'”.

April 24 would have been their wedding anniversary. Your husband's body hasn't been recovered yet. “We can't bury it, we can't get to the village, because the village is still busy,” he said.

But even if the people will be liberated, Natalya who does not know if he will return. “The memories are hard,” he said. “I don't know how I will live with all that, but I still understand that my husband built this house for us. I would never be able to decide to sell it.”

Ukrainian authorities have reported systematic sexual assaults on women by Russian forces since the Kremlin forces invaded last month. Dymtro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, vowed to seek justice through the International Criminal Court, following the historic recognition of rape as a war crime in 2008.

Natalya's case may be the first test. Last week, Iryna Venediktova, the Attorney General of Ukraine, announced that the first official investigation had been opened into the alleged rape of a woman by Russian soldiers after her husband was shot dead. The woman, who remains anonymous, was Natalya.

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